tom

tom paulin poetry::At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic.
Yet he is unable to handle complex ideas, which is something of a drawback for an intellectual, not to speak of a senior oxford academic.
His forte is the gritty image, not the intricate reflection.
Few critics can reveal the inner workings of a poem so effectively, and few would be less capable of describing what a poem is.
Paulin has written some superbly powerful poems himself, yet is probably the least talented of the halfdozen northern irish poetic superstars.
His recent freeverse doodlings, laidback to the point of shoddy artlessness, have nothing like the abrasive force of his earlier poetic volumes.
He is an irish republican who applauds antirepublican history writing, and a fan of a united ireland who from time to time betrays an unpleasant dash of ulster supremacism in his attitude to the existing irish republic.