A memoir from one of Ireland's most distinguished poets. Richard Murphy writes with affectionate lack of sentiment about the Protestant gentry from which he comes. The literary milieu in London, Dublin, and New York are described with serenely devastating honesty. Here too are disturbing memories of discrimination against Irish Travelers, and of extreme violence in Sri Lanka. The Kick is the record of a lifetime's engagement with the fracturing tensions of personal life and with the more obviously violent legacies of Anglo-Irish history.