..".Along with the poetry comes a growing awareness of the 'independent airs' of radical Belfast, of the great dissenting tradition of the past, of an integrationist stance. Birds flying in and out of The Clock Flower poems- blackbirds, sparrows, hawks, jays-put us in mind of John Hewitt's lines about staking his future on 'birds flying in and out of the schoolroom window.' Hewitt, and beyond him the nineteenth-century Dr. William Drennan (subject of Rice's MPhil thesis), are exemplars for this poet. But Rice's voice is distinctively his own: forthright, colloquial, wry and persuasive." -Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement