Poetry runs deep in Inishmore's O Direain family. "A Woman of Aran," a distinguished collection of poems by Maire Aine Ni Dhireain, niece of Mairtin O Direain, has just been published by Nuascealta. The island's landscape is evoked by the charcoal drawings of Cathal Poirteir and the poems' original Irish is accompanied by Tomas Mac Siomoin's English translations of them. The poems of "A Woman of Aran" span a period stretching from the traditional Inishmore into which she was born through the years of her lengthy exile and, eventually, to her return to the island of her birth. She expresses in clear verse the emotional correlative of all these experiences, the unforgettable landscapes and seascapes of Inishmore being the constant background of her musings. Maire Aine Ni Dhireain does not hesitate to engage with raw emotion, whether evoked by love, death or the crags of her beloved Aran, transmuting it into elegant free verse. She is always sharply conscious of the historical dimensions of her surroundings, whether in Inishmore or London. Many of her present-day fellow-Irish forget or ignore this dimension, but she has no compunction in expressing the indignation she feels at the historical wrong done to our people. "A Woman of Aran" entitles Maire Aine Ni Dhireain to add her name to Inishmore's distinguished literary pantheon."