Childhood memories, rural traditions, vanished landscapes, love and loss, sport and music are the themes of this vibrant poetry collection from Michael Durack.  The book entitled Flip Sides makes a link with the old Jukebox days when, as often as not, the B-Sides of the 45 rpm singles were inadvertently played, providing the listener (and in this case the reader) with a series of unexpected treats.  The poems are set, for the most part, in Ireland’s rural Mid-West and the Limerick city region with occasional ventures, physically or imaginatively, to exotic overseas locations.  If you are from Limerick or East Clare, you will love this book, and it will be especially appreciated by anyone living away from home. It is full of evocative local place names. On the forgotten railway line to Killaloe you will encounter Coolnadornory, Kilmaglassderry, Garynatineel and Fort Henry The hit single from this Flipsides album, one might say, is the poem Birdhill Station.  A great poem which soaks a world of great poems in the willows, herbs and grass of Lackenavea.   In so many poems here the classical and the local run on contiguous lines in a rocking rhythm. A bonus with this collection of poems has to be the cover, designed by Ruth Durack.  With Yeats, she sails us to Byzantium, with striking drawings of Greek, Russian and Turkish minarets and mosques. Then turn the cover image upside down and in vivid reds, greens, orange and blues you discover a small railway station, a train, a tractor and bales of hay. Highly recommended for lovers of poetry and the local.