We always knew Donaghy was one of the foremost poets of his generation but this confirmed our suspicions that he was one of the great writers. The book contains prose that will satisfy those with a yearning for writing with the scientific verve and acumen of a Steven Pinker and those looking for the fiercely defended opinions of a Richard Dawkins, and those simply looking for the  exquisite bibliophilia of an Anne Fadiman. Donaghy the prose writer is a little part of each (though each is only a little part of what he has to offer).

But perhaps the most apt description of the book is that it constitutes a modern primer in ars poetic – albeit one packed with jokes, asides and the unmistakable presence of the author. A book full of wisdom but, to borrow Donaghy’s own words in his poem ‘The Bacchae’,  ‘not clever, not ever, nor loud nor flaunt’.

For me the two years working on the The Shape of the Dance constituted the culmination of an education begun as a student of Donaghy some years before his death (a little like being accepted into an Ivy League university only to be told after the first semester that you had to complete the rest of your studies via correspondence course and that your professor wouldn’t be writing back any time soon). Any good education leaves you with a sense of how much there is to understand but also shows you how to delight in trying to understand it. Which is exactly what I’d like to suggest this book will do.

Plato warned that poets are powerless to indite a verse or chant an oracle until they are put out of their senses so that their minds are no longer in them, and ever since no one feels entirely comfortable sharing a cab with one. In fact, a cabbie once pulled over and ordered me out when my travelling companion introduced me as a poet. Incredible? Mind you, my friend had just introduced himself as ‘a philosopher’. Normal people don’t want to hear that sort of thing.

[from 'All Poets are Mad' in The Shape of the Dance. Read the essay here.]

[Adam O'Riordan is one of the editors of The Shape of the Dance, out today.]