The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass follows the success of Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 19942004, which won the 2008 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the most prestigious poetry award in Ireland. In this new, deeply meditative and wide-ranging collection, Harry Clifton brings his extraordinary poetic and intellectual gifts to bear on the present state of Irish culture. These are both personal and public reflections (on love, marriage, middle age, and history) that stake his claim as one of the most significant Irish poets now writing."