FRANCIS HARVEY was born in Enniskillen in 1925 and has published four previous collections of poems, the most recent of which is Making Space: New & Selected Poems (Dedalus, 2001). Among the many prizes his work has won are The Irish Times/Yeats Summer School Prize, The Guardian/WWF Prize, and a Peterloo Prize. The publication of Collected Poems is a major event in the Irish poetry calendar, bringing together work from all of his earlier collections with a large selection of new poems which show him to be as attentive as ever both to philosophical subtleties and to the wonders of the natural world. In the context of Irish poetry, Harvey is, according to Moya Cannon in her Introduction, "a Basho-like figure, guided by an unwavering sense of true north, always moving to the washed light on higher ground."