It's possible over the course of just one lifetime to see the world you've grown up in and all of its certainties stood on their head. That happened to the generation that grew up in the 1960's in Ireland in a social climate that's now lost as Atlantis.
It's a relief to see working class Irish lives being captured with this up close familiarity and insight, and in his new collection 'Homesickness' author Colin Barrett is familiar with the many traps Irish life can spring on them.
Irish writer James Orr may not have been well known for his poetry in his lifetime, but his poem "The Irishman" is as powerful now as when it was first written more than two centuries ago.