The poems in Michael Durack's Flip Sides are set, for the most part, in Ireland's rural Mid-West with occasional ventures, physically or imaginatively, to Dublin, London, Wales, Amsterdam and the United States. Childhood memories, rural traditions, vanished landscapes, love and loss, sport and music all the familiar themes from his previous collection, Where It Began – reappear, and the mundane and the surreal lie cheek by jowl. Poems are "interrogated", Sean Bean morphs into the Shan Van ...

How does a carefree, four-day honeymoon trip from California to New Mexico turn into a trap, resulting in a jail sentence in El Paso and a deportation to Holland? The Illegal from Holland tells how a Dutch citizen and her American husband travel halfway around the world to overturn her deportation. Along the way, they learn about the amazing inefficiency of the U.S. Immigration Department and the ominous danger of the blind hostility and prejudices of many Americans towards illegal immigra...

Conversations With a Deaf Cat is the story of how Yolande and Michael taught English on a Canadian Indian reservation and cared for Yolande's mother for five months in the Netherlands until her death from ALS. It also tells about Michael's experiences as a native English speaker in a home with people who tried not to speak English whenever possible.Michael and Yolande are English teachers and writers who travel the globe teaching non-English speaking students how to sound and write ...

Michael Durack's humanity and generosity of spirit are evident in all his poems, leaving the reader nodding in agreement, often with a broad smile. He acknowledges that poetry need not always be serious, but he treats every theme with characteristic compassion. - Fiona Clark-Echlin