"The news from poems" as the great American poet William Carlos Williams observed " is hard to find but men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there".

In this the 5th collection of poems by Limerick poet John Liddy, Cast-A-Net, the "news" is cast from the ordinary observations of the poets life and told in myth and story.

From the very first poem, Lip Reading, he throws down a marker to tell us exactly what he is trying to achieve with his poetry, namely "to turn ordinary water into Rioja wine". This task that the poet has set himself requires tremendous awareness above and beyond that of the intelect and, I feel, has been successfully achieved with this collection.

John Liddy has always had an intutitive grasp of the place of poetry in society, time and time again the poems in Cast-A-Net take us back to the childhood of the poet where he has found a place for himself in the natural order of things - for the poet everything is as it is and while most of us struggle to bring meaning and a sense of belonging to our lives, here the poet has discovered his place and has used it to achieve an almost enlightment of the soul.

A large number of poems also deal with another great mythological truth namely that of "All things must pass". Here he tells it as it is - everything is destroyed by time; friends - Ger Brinn Dies In Australia; family- Recalling Mother; landscapes- The Dead Coast of galacia; moments of happiness and sorrow .This then is the "news" that John Liddy brings us. But while he faces up to the reality of life these poems are not necessarily laments but rather songs of praise which leave us with a sense of that all is well. This realisation gives new life and clarity to the poet and one feels, rightly or wrongly, that here, as he enters like Dante "the middle way of life", he has also entered into a new way of responding to the world.

On small critisism I would make is that the prints by Gavin Hogg accompaning the text, by been squeezed into the middle of the book, lose much of their context in relation to the poems, which is a shame because the labyrinthine motif is very appropriate in terms of the life of the poet and indeed, Man, in general.

The collection is available from O'Mahonys Bookshop and The White House Bar at €10.