Blue Formica Table

The Blue Formica Table is a long poem, a book of conversations between the poet and his father. It outlines a difficult relationship and the poems become a gesture towards someone unknown yet terribly familiar, echoing, perhaps, everyman's relationship with his father. The rigour of the father's approach, in language accurate, strenuous and bold, is released. The exchanges are sharp, the relationship is dramatically developed. The table forms a focus and an image, and the city of Cork is made vibrantly real throughout the poem.

Robert Welch now works in the University of Ulster at Coleraine.