HOW COMPLETE + FINAL THE FEELING AS I LIFT ITS CURVE IN THE NET by Ellen Dillon

How complete + final the feeling as I lift its curve in the net is a work of hybrid lyric-essay by Ellen Dillon that moves between elegy, translation, and ecological witness, finding its gravitational centre in a pencil sketch by Barrie Cooke of two figures hauling a pike from a boat on Lough Gur.

From that image, the book spirals outwards: into Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, into the Irish-language poetry of Seán Ó'Ríordáin and the sustained presence of Fanny Howe, into questions of what is lost or hardened when Irish metaphor is rendered into English, and into the changing condition of the lakes themselves.

The book's form is restless and self-aware, moving between prose meditation, collaged verse, close etymological reading, and a composite poem that interweaves Ó'Ríordáin and Howe's own words, while remaining anchored throughout in the physical particularities of lakeshore, birdsong, and weather.