This compilation is an invitation to explore, street by street, one of the world's most famous literary cities through the poems and songs it has inspired both in English and Irish, by contemporary as well as historical writers.

Gerard Smyth has been praised for his "painstaking eye for the telling detail" (Philip Casey). This new collection sees him return to the subject of his native Dublin as he also extends his geographical and thematic reach in poems that are typically thoughtful, quiet-spoken and assured.

"At the heart of Gerard Smyth's entire oeuvre is an intriguing duality. He is an urban poet who emerged as an artist from the distinctive Dublin modernism of Michael Smith's New Writers' Press, yet his work over the years has accumulated all the characteristics of a compelling, Kavanagh-like, story-telling narrative method." So begins Thomas McCarthy's insightful Introduction to this generous selection of four decades of Geard Smyth's poetry, in which his intimacy with his nativy city ("Smyth's synagogue," as McCarthy calls it) is balanced by a fascination with the wider imaginative world of Art and of "many journeys," both outward and interior. Gerard Smyth was born in 1951 in Dublin, where he still lives. His poetry has been published widely in literary journals in Ireland, Britain and the United States, as well as in translation, since the late 1960s. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Daytime Sleeper (2002), A New Tenancy (2004) and The Mirror Tent (2007), all from the Dedalus Press. He is a member of Aosdana.