Time In Ireland Research Articles

Bystander defibrillation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Ireland

AimsTo describe and explore predictors of bystander defibrillation in Ireland during the period 2012 to 2020. To examine the relationship between bystander defibrillation and health system developments. MethodsNational level Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) registry data were interrogated, focusing on patients who had defibrillation performed. Bystander defibrillation (as compared to EMS initiated defibrillation) was the key outcome of concern. Logistic regression models were built and refined by fitting predictors, performing stepwise variable selection and by adding pairwise interactions that improved fit. ResultsThe data included 5,751 cases of OHCA where defibrillation was performed. Increasing year over time (OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.13, 1.21) was associated with increased adjusted odds of bystander defibrillation. Non-cardiac aetiology was associated with reduced adjusted odds of bystander defibrillation (OR 0.30, 95% CI 0.21, 0.42), as were increasing age in years (OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.987, 0.996) and night-time occurrence of OHCA (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.53, 0.83). Six further variables in the final model (sex, call response interval, incident location (home or other), who witnessed collapse (bystander or not witnessed), urban or rural location, and the COVID period) were involved in significant interactions. Bystander defibrillation was in general less likely in urban settings and at home locations. Whilst women were less likely to receive bystander defibrillation overall, in witnessed OHCAs, occurring outside the home, in urban areas and outside of the COVID-19 period women were more likely, to receive bystander defibrillation. ConclusionsDefibrillation by bystanders has increased incrementally over time in Ireland. Interventions to address sex and age-based disparities, alongside interventions to increase bystander defibrillation at night, in urban settings and at home locations are required.

Resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Ireland 2012–2020: Modelling national temporal developments and survival predictors

AimTo explore potential predictors of national out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) survival, including health system developments and the COVID pandemic in Ireland. MethodsNational level OHCA registry data from 2012 through to 2020, relating to unwitnessed, and bystander witnessed OHCA were interrogated. Logistic regression models were built by including predictors through stepwise variable selection and enhancing the models by adding pairwise interactions that improved fit. Missing data sensitivity analyses were conducted using multiple imputation. ResultsThe data included 18,177 cases. The final model included seventeen variables. Of these nine variables were involved in pairwise interactions. The COVID-19 period was associated with reduced survival (OR 0.61, 95%CI 0.43, 0.87), as were increasing age in years (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.96, 0.97) and call response interval in minutes (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.96, 0.99). Amiodarone administration (OR 3.91, 95% CI 2.80, 5.48), urban location (OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.12, 1.77), and chronological year over time (OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.08, 1.20) were associated with increased survival. ConclusionsNational survival from OHCA has significantly increased incrementally over time in Ireland. The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with decreased survival even after accounting for potential disruption to key elements of bystander and EMS care. Further research is needed to understand and address the discrepancy between urban and rural OHCA survival. Information concerning pre-event patient health status and inpatient care process may yield important additional insights in future.

Keeping up with the times in Ireland: Older adults bridging the age-based digital divide together?

In 2021, data on Internet usage for those aged 75 years and older in Ireland indicated that almost half of this cohort (46%) had never accessed the Internet. This study examines the role of informal peer learning in the digital lives of older adults in Ireland. A mixed methods case study methodology was employed. Data were collected from 100 participants by means of an online survey, followed by interviews with 12 participants who opted in from the survey. Interview data were collected and analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach. My findings indicate that questions surrounding digital technologies were best addressed on an individual level, often from a same generation peer, whether household member, family or other relative, friend or member of one’s social environment. There was evidence of indirect reciprocity from these learning exchanges to a participant’s peers. Research into peer learning in informal social and community environments for older adults has been scarcely addressed heretofore. This research highlights that it is here that much later-life learning relating to digital skills takes place. The principles of intergenerational learning: learning with one another, learning from one another, learning about one another, offer a useful lens for future consideration of informal peer learning related to digital skills development amongst older adults.

A theoretical framework for developing a health impact assessment implementation model in Ireland

Abstract Background A Health Research Board (HRB) four-year research study, which commenced in January 2023, seeks to explore the process of carrying out Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) with a view embedding the approach as normal practice in local and national policy development in Ireland. Methods A theoretical framework has been constructed to develop an HIA implementation model. The framework is based on the all-island Institute of Public Health Ireland's HIA guidance. The theoretical framework will examine factors affecting HIA implementation, using both the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and Normalisation Process Theory (NPT). An action research methodological approach will be used to gather data on the experiences that participants will reflect on while doing the HIA. Participants included in the study will be the members of the two HIA Steering Groups created for each HIA (12 participants in each HIA) and policy end-users of the HIA evidence from the city council and government ministries (20 participants for each HIA). Results The theoretical framework will be applied to two HIAs, in order to generate data in creating the HIA implementation model. HIA 1, commencing October 2023, will be conducted on the local government Cork City Development Plan. HIA 2, commencing January 2025, will be carried out on the Irish Government's Climate Action Plan. Preliminary results on the application of the theoretical framework to HIA 1 will be presented, as well as reflections for the planned HIA 2. Conclusions For the first time in Ireland and beyond, a theoretical framework has been developed employing innovative methodological approaches to building a contextualised HIA implementation model. Using action research in assessing the implementation of HIA, with a view to analysing the lived experience of Steering Group members as they conduct the HIAs, and policy end-users, will ensure an enhanced HIA implementation model. Key messages • The development of an innovative theoretical framework for the study of HIA. • The building of HIA capacity in Ireland using the newly revised Institute of Public Health guidance.

Nasal flu vaccine: attitudes and perceptions of parents who use social media.

In October of 2020, a live attenuated Nasal Flu Vaccine (NFV) was licensed for the first time in Ireland for children aged 2&ndash17 years of age. The uptake of the NFV in Ireland was much lower than expected. The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of Irish parents towards the NFV, and to examine the relationship between the perceptions of vaccines and the uptake rate. An 18-question online questionnaire, developed through Qualtrics software®, was distributed via various social media platforms. Data were examined using SPSS to run associations using chi-squared tests. Free text boxes were assessed using thematic analysis. Of the 183 people who participated, 76% of parents had vaccinated their children. 81% of parents would vaccinate all their children, while 65% disagreed with vaccinating only children 5 years or older. The majority of parents agreed that the NFV was safe and effective. Analysis of the text included requests for alternative vaccine locations (22%), difficulties getting an appointment (6%), and a lack of public awareness of the vaccine campaign (19%). Parents are willing to have their children vaccinated but there are barriers to vaccination contributing to the low uptake of the NFV. Increasing the availability of the NFV in pharmacies and schools can increase uptake. Public health messaging around the availability of the NFV is excellent but a more succinct message is needed to highlight the importance of under 5s receiving the vaccine. Future studies should examine the promotion of the NFV by healthcare professionals and general practitioners' attitudes towards the NFV.

“The parambulatyon of thys lordshype is not travele”: 450 years on, a digital re-evaluation of Robert Lythe’s survey of Ireland.

Surveyors tasked with measuring and recording the landscape of sixteenth century Great Britain and Ireland had no definitive guide on surveying practice and no comprehensive standardisation or regulation was in place. They rarely recorded the techniques used in their fieldwork and so their field practices are largely a mystery. For today’s historians of cartography who seek to understand why and how maps were made, this leaves a void in our knowledge of early surveying practice. This paper addresses this lacuna in knowledge by testing and applying methods for early map and survey analysis. Marking the 450th anniversary of the culmination of Robert Lythe’s time in Ireland, this fresh inquiry into his survey is approached through the little extant evidence available; correspondence, and what is believed to be a map produced from the survey, the ‘Petworth Map’ (1571), extant at Petworth House Archives. We invertthe standard historical methodology, beginning with the map and tracing back to the survey process, to reveal new evidence of sixteenth-century surveying practices. A mixed-method approach intertwining digital, quantitative and archival sources revealfresh insight on Lythe’s survey and highlight how, in re-thinking the methods by which we approach early map analysis, we can learn more about western European mapmaking of the sixteenth-century.

Collaborative Design in Kinetic Performance: Safeguarding the Uilleann Pipes through Inertial Motion Capture

This paper explores the possibilities of motion capture as a tool to preserve and study Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) practices such as playing instruments. The Uilleann pipes are both an instrument and a culture with a now strong community following and recovering after being almost extinguished several times in Ireland. The playing and making of the Uilleann pipes was incorporated into the Representative list of the UNESCO Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017. This experience was performed in collaboration with several Uillean pipe players who contributed at every stage of the performance recording with comments and orientation. Some of these comments were also later formally kept as interviews to the players. The technical capture of the movements was done using a Rokoko Smart suit and paired Smart gloves which the piper wears for the performance. The resulting motion file was then cleaned and redirected to Blender 3D, a community made software package that allows the incorporation of a renderable avatar that helps for the dissemination of the performance. This recording process, called Inertial system, allows performers to perform almost anywhere and to capture the movements of the players with good accuracy. This process of recording and collaboration with the community is a cost-effective solution that can be of particular interest for scholars as well as for cultural communities wishing to archive these practices quickly. This design of technology and collaborative recording allows for a round experience that combined the detail of the technically enhanced recording with the interpretive nuance of the player that enriches the capturing process with mentions to how it is ‘relatively’ comfortable for the player and how efficient it is in terms of resulting detail. This collaboratively designed experience also provides the three aspects of intangible heritage preservation: supports the community -who can learn from the resulting animation; helps situating the practice within the cultural practice of the community-as they are part of the process; and helps materialise the output permitting its digital cataloguing, archival, and storage.

Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647–1693

Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647–1693

‘The Last Arrival Point’: The refugee experience of resettlement in Ireland

BackgroundProgramme Refugees are refugees who are invited into a country by its government in response to a request for protection from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The increase in arrivals of Programme Refugees to Ireland has received a lot of attention to date. With financial support from the European Union, Ireland intends to grant entry to a further 2900 Programme Refugees via this unique pathway known as the Irish Refugee and Protection Programme (IRPP) between 2020 and 2023. This novel research explores the experiences of Programme Refugees resettling in Ireland within a psychological framework. MethodThis research adopted an exploratory approach using a qualitative framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine Programme Refugees living in the community (5 male, 4 female) with an average age of 37 years. The average length of time in Ireland was 33 months, of which an average of 25 months was spent resettled in permanent housing. ResultsCodebook thematic analysis underpinned by a critical realist epistemology was used to analyse the data. Two key themes were identified; “The home change our life” and “I can start my new life”. ConclusionThis research obtains the refugee’s perspective and personal insights of availing of the IRPP and resettling in Ireland. Although the purposive sampling reduces the generalisability of findings to Programme Refugees resettled in the West of Ireland, this research offers an awareness and understanding of a Programme Refugee’s journey towards resettlement and the impact it can have on their mental health and psychological well-being. This research has implications for national and European resettlement policies, and it is hoped that it can be used to guide the development of future resettlement programmes internationally.

Occupational Therapy Services in School-Based Practice: A Pediatric Occupational Therapy Perspective from Ireland.

Purpose School is a primary setting for pediatric occupational therapy practice, yet little is known about the provision of school-based occupational therapy in many countries internationally. The purpose of this study was to explore current school-based occupational therapy practice for the first time in Ireland to gain insight into current and potential service provision and to identify new directions and potential pathways for development. Methods This descriptive quantitative study utilized a cross-sectional online survey to gain the perspectives of the population of pediatric occupational therapists working regularly in schools across Ireland. Respondents were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Data were analysed through qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics. Results The survey elicited 35 responses, yielding a 21.2% estimated response rate. Findings demonstrated that respondents provided therapy services in schools most commonly on a weekly (28.6%) or monthly (34.3%) basis, with only 5.0% working in the same school on a weekly or fortnightly basis. The majority of respondents (54.3%) used a direct therapy approach with a child, rather than coaching or modelling, to primarily address sensory, hand function, or daily living needs. None used a whole class or whole school (universal or tiered) approach. While respondents (54.3%) generally viewed collaborative practice as a strength of school-based practice, they also identified barriers to collaboration in schools. A core barrier is related to how services are constructed across health and education, with differing philosophies of service provision. The majority of respondents (75.0%) reported that they had not received any training to deliver evidence-based practice in therapy provision specific to school-based practice. Implications for Practice. This study indicates that therapists require continual education on evidence-based school practice as it applies in an Irish context. Furthermore, clarification of school therapy roles and service delivery models are required in order to determine how they contrast with traditional clinic roles. This will enable therapists to strengthen the coordination of service delivery between health and educational services to maximize the outcomes of school-based practice.

Critical discourse analysis on the influence of media commentary on fatal fetal anomaly in Ireland.

Fatal Fetal Anomaly (FFA) has generated international media attention as termination of pregnancy (TOP) for FFA was legislated for, for the first time in Ireland. Media offers an insight into what health-related information is available to the public and how it is presented to them. The aim of this study was to examine how information related to FFA, TOP for FFA and perinatal palliative care (PPC) were framed in Irish published media. A critical discourse analysis, which examines the relations between discourse and social and cultural phenomena was implemented. Habermasian's framework facilitated an objective analysis of the text, to facilitate interpretation and understanding of socially produced meanings. A broadsheet and journal were chosen. Dated from 2012 to 2017, 129 articles were identified. Themes of personification of the unborn, human rights and power and politics were embedded in the discourse, creating political influence to sway perceptions and views. Terminology were chosen by different ideological perspectives to create varying contexts and support arguments. PPC was suppressed within the published media. This study highlights misrepresentations in the information delivered to the public and suggests the need for healthcare professionals to expand their media literacy and develop these skills with their patients.

The Economic Thought of William Petty: Exploring the Colonialist Roots of Economics

The Economic Thought of William Petty: Exploring the Colonialist Roots of Economics

The educational attainment of the children of stay-at-home mothers: evidence from the Irish Marriage Bar

Abstract The relationship between maternal employment and the educational attainment of children is examined using data from the third wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. Because maternal employment is potentially endogenous with respect to child educational attainment, instrumental variable estimation is used. In this analysis, two sets of instruments are used based on whether the mother’s employment was affected by the Marriage Bar that was in place at that time in Ireland. A Marriage Bar is the requirement that women in certain jobs must leave that job when they marry. It is found that the probability that a child completes university is 1–3 percentage points lower for each additional year of maternal employment during the first 18 years of the child’s life.

Insurance status and waiting times for hospital-based services in Ireland

In Ireland long waits for public hospital services are a feature of the healthcare system, with limited evidence that waits for private hospital services (delivered in both public and private hospitals) are shorter. In 2008, in an attempt to ensure more equitable access to hospital-based services, a ‘common waiting list’ for all patients within public hospitals was proposed. The aim of this paper is to analyse waiting times in Ireland for hospital services for patients with and without private health insurance (PHI) and to examine whether the 2008 reform reduced the differential in waiting. The analysis used data from the 2007 and 2010 health module of the Quarterly National Household survey (QNHS). The impact of insurance status on waiting times was analysed for the period before and after the reforms. A higher proportion of those without PHI were waiting more than three months for hospital services relative to those with PHI. There was no evidence that the 2008 reforms reduced the differential. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the proposals were not fully implemented, although expansion of capacity for private patients’ treatment in private hospitals is a possible confounding factor.

A cost analysis of a community-based support centre for cancer patients and their families in Ireland: the EVeCANs study.

Cancer patients and their families experience a range of physical, psychological and financial adverse effects. Community-based cancer centres offer a range of services and interventions, free of charge, to support those affected by cancer. While shown to be effective, there is a lack of information on the costs of these services. Our aim was to estimate the resource impact of a community-based cancer support centre. Over a 7-month period, there were 2032 contacts with 238 clients whose average age was 60years. The most frequently used services were transport to treatment (20%), complementary therapies (48%), exercise classes (10%) and counselling (9%). This cost analysis estimated total annual cost to provide all services was €313,744. Average annual cost per person was €1138. Current uptake at the centre represents 8% of all cancer incidences in seven counties surrounding the centre. If uptake increases by 10%, scenario analyses predict an increase in total costs increase to €429,043 and a decrease in costs per patient to €915. As cancer incidences increase, the need for supportive care is growing. Community-based services have been established to meet these needs and fill this gap in national health services. Long-term sustainability of these centres is uncertain as they are entirely reliant on donations and volunteers. This analysis estimates the costs of one such community-based cancer support centre, for the first time in Ireland. Findings can be used to inform future planning of cancer supportive care services, including establishing links between tertiary and community-based centres, and cost effectiveness analyses, nationally and internationally.

Development and Optimisation of a Multiresidue Method for the Determination of 40 Anthelmintic Compounds in Environmental Water Samples by Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) with LC-MS/MS Detection.

A comprehensive multiresidue method was developed and validated for the determination of 40 anthelmintic compounds, including 13 transformation products, in surface and groundwater samples at sub nanogram per litre (ng L−1) levels. Anthelmintic residues were extracted from unfiltered water samples using polymeric divinylbenzene solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, and eluted with methanol: acetone (50:50, v/v). Purified extracts were concentrated, filtered and injected for UHPLC-MS/MS determination. The method recovery (at a concentration representative of realistic expected environmental water levels based on literature review) ranged from 83–113%. The method was validated, at three concentration levels, in accordance to Commission Decision 2002/657/EC and SANTE/11813/2017 guidelines. Trueness and precision, under within-laboratory reproducibility conditions, ranged from 88–114% and 1.1–19.4%, respectively. The applicability of the method was assessed in a pilot study whereby 72 different surface and groundwater samples were collected and analysed for the determination of these 40 compounds for the first time in Ireland. This is the most comprehensive method available for the investigation of the occurrence of both anthelmintic parent compounds and their transformation products in raw, unfiltered environmental waters.

The maternal health behaviours of non-Irish nationals during pregnancy and the effect of time living in Ireland

ObjectivesMaternal health behaviours (MHBs) can influence pregnancy outcomes. Despite efforts internationally to encourage positive MHBs, women often fail to comply with pregnancy guidelines. International studies show differences in MHBs between nationalities and an effect of time spent in the host country. There is limited Irish data in this area, with no previous research relating to the effect of time in Ireland. Study designThis study is a cross-sectional analysis of the Growing Up in Ireland infant cohort, a nationally representative longitudinal study. MethodsExamination of the MHBs of non-Irish nationals during pregnancy and the effect of time in Ireland on the said behaviours. ResultsAn association was found between time spent in Ireland and increased alcohol consumption prevalence. Those living in Ireland for ≤5 years were 60.8% less likely to consume alcohol during pregnancy (0.000) and 29.3% less likely to take folic acid before conception (0.021). Those who smoked during pregnancy were 98.6% more likely to consume alcohol (0.000) and those who consumed alcohol were 95.2% more likely to smoke during pregnancy (0.000). ConclusionsThe results demonstrate differences in MHBs and the influence of time living in Ireland. These findings are of relevance for policy and intervention planning to optimise pregnancy outcomes among non-nationals.

The Role of Advanced Midwife Practitioner

Ireland ranks 21st out of 36 countries for its healthcare system. Emergency department (ED) waiting times in Ireland are the worst in Europe (Edwards 2018). Since 2000, overcrowding in the ED has become critical, with nursing unions becoming involved in industrial action and trolley counts, to highlight the crisis (Doran 2003). Byrne and Heyman (1997) state that nursing staff in ED are focused on offering vital physical care and, in busy departments, those needs regarded as non-urgent, non-physical are sometimes overlooked. Interventions such as the implementation of an AMP service and designated obstetric ED would aid in lightening the obstetric burden on these ever-expanding ED queues, while facilitating improved patient safety and quality care.

From Shebeen’s to supervised injecting centres: The socio-historical construction and portrayal of addiction in modern Ireland

The most commonly accepted view internationally is that addiction is an individualised brain-based disease or disorder. This view is buttressed by neuroscientific evidence, which is interpreted as demonstrating that the addicted brain undergoes long-term structural and functional changes as a result of substance use. Proponents of this model argue that such evidence is conclusive and that we have finally, over many decades, arrived at an enlightened, evidence-based, scientific understanding of addiction and dispensed with outdated ‘moral models’. However, critical scholars have argued that what we mean by addiction very much depends on the political–economic and socio-culture structure of a particular society at a particular temporal juncture. This paper seeks to build on this critical scholarship by examining shifting addiction understandings across time in Ireland. (This refers to the 26 counties of the southern Irish state.) This has involved analysing various documents, archives, and journal articles relating to the main ‘claim-making’ groups in Irish society (Catholic Church, medical profession, government, and media). It is argued that understandings of addiction through time in Ireland have tracked the country’s political–economic and socio-cultural development and have not developed according to ‘objective evidenced-based Science’. Furthermore, the portrayal of addiction across time has directed attention inwards to the diseased or disordered individual and away from macro-level processes. This has also led to the neglect of potentially vital areas of inquiry in relation to addiction scholarship in Ireland. To this end, the present research paper intends to highlight some of these macro-level processes in order to suggest fruitful avenues for future research.

Hopeful Hopkins by Desmond Egan (review)

Hopeful Hopkins, Desmond Egan (Newbridge: Goldsmith Press, 2017), 120 pages. What Desmond Egan brings to bear on Hopkins criticism is a refreshing, distinctively poetic, aesthetic lens, an approach and a reading which make the work alive and which may hope to make it more widely known and better understood. The first chapter opens with an epigraph from the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: ‘Darkness can only be perceived by an eye which was created for light’. There is a story about Rahner that, every time he sat down to write, he contemplated three words written in large letters above his desk: ‘Nothing before Kant’. For him, in his theology the subjectivity of the stating subject must be taken seriously and fully accounted for. This is very apt for Hopkins, whose focus is the climate of the seasons of the heart, our ‘being indoors’. It is also apt that Rahner should echo Keats’s concept of ‘negative capability’, the capacity to live with uncomfortable questions and painful feelings without sinking into clinical depression. Is a tendency to sadness ‘incompatible with inner peace’, this first chapter asks. For Egan, supposedly depressive artists such as Kafka, Bergman, Becket or Brian Bourke exemplify the truth that ‘a tragic sense is by no means incompatible with a positive disposition’. Thus, although the poet’s time in Ireland was partly miserable, he nevertheless wrote twenty-eight poems in that period. For the author, the so-called sonnets of desolation are sonnets of hope, not despair. He argues cogently and, for me at least, persuasively that the sickly Hopkins was far from being a nervous wreck. Clearly the poet experienced what might be called Prufrockesque moments of self-doubt, but examples of his sense of humour can be uncovered as well. The author sets out to redress an incomplete perception of Hopkins, whose aliveness to the resources of language and whose metrical complexity in composition imply imaginative energy and inner spiritual space. A unifying thread in what is a collection of eight essays is the idea that poets, and Hopkins in particular, centre on what is concrete and individual, on the specifics of subjectivity, ‘the sensuous and the precise’, what Hopkins speaks of as inscape, without overlooking the objective thematic focus of the work and the inspiration of a topic which so preoccupies this poet, the humanity of Christ. One critic, Noel Barber SJ, has praised Egan’s reading of ‘As kingfishers Autumn 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 427 395 catch fire’ as ‘the best study of that poem I have seen’. This poem contains the great cri de coeur, ‘what I do is me, for that I came’. That clarity of calling, it might be said, echoes something of Desmond Egan’s own sense of mission to redress the balance between the dark sonnets and the vitality and imaginative energy of Hopkins’s work as a whole. A view of the poet as the depressed, repressed prophet of doom and gloom is one-sided, hence Egan’s title and focus on ‘hopeful Hopkins’. It takes a poet to know a poet, as Robert Smart puts it in his heartwarming introduction, and Egan’s argument is wellsupported from the evidence of the poet’s life and poetic writing. His aliveness to the materiality of poetry is responsive to the exuberance of Hopkins’s images from nature and the metaphoric weight they carry. The metaphors are obvious enough, but Egan is alive to what might be called the metonymic dimension and draws the reader’s attention to the features of punctuation that keep the movement going, aided – in the case of ‘As kingfishers catch fire’ – by the twenty verbs that, as Egan notices with poetic alertness, mean that ‘every image is one of movement’. Egan is concerned not just to teach a subject but to evoke interest in the musicality and metaphoric layers of the poetic craft and art. Matisse said of his paintings that his aim was ‘to evoke and not to inform’. Like C S Lewis’s definition of a good book as one that invites good reading, Hopkins requires time to ‘get’ him; he is, in that sense, an acquired taste. Something similar...