SOURCE: Wills, Clair. “Making Waves.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4658 (10 July 1992): 23.

In the following review, Wills surveys Marconi's Cottage, situating McGuckian's achievement within the context of twentieth-century European poetry.

One of the questions currently much in vogue concerns our relative “Europeanness”, or lack of it. In keeping with the Republic of Ireland's recent affirmation of a European self-image, Medbh McGuckian in Marconi's Cottage stresses the importance of Ireland's links with European poetry. This was true of her last volume too, but whereas in On Ballycastle Beach (1988) her engagement with European poets (or poets who “chose” Europe, such as Byron) symbolized through the language of flags and national tongues the political possibilities for Ireland outside a relationship with Britain, this volume is more concerned with the nature of the poetic gift and the value of poetry itself.

This is a rich and authoritative collection, containing some of McGuckian's finest poems...