Following his acclaimed Pandemonium, Thomas McCarthy's Prophecy dwells on childhood memory, romantic love, and the varieties of human attachment. There are poems on illness and recovery, ageing and creativity. From the community well of his childhood home in County Waterford to the holy well and pilgrim site of St Gobnait's in County Cork, the poet finds that the act of remembering is an act of making and understanding. 'All this / Metaphor and trauma and formal technique / I place in my canvas travel bag,' he writes. 'Along with Paul Muldoon,' suggested Dennis O'Driscoll, McCarthy is 'the most important Irish poet of his generation.'