A review of Rus in Urbe

‘ This collection is very much of our time as the suburban sprawl spreads further into the Irish countryside. Lawless considers the rural and the urban and where the two intersect. Although he divides the poems into ‘rus’ and ‘in urbe’,  the intrusion of one upon the other and the interaction between rural and urban cannot be ignored. They are in the main serious poems which are layered with meaning and which  take their rhythm not just from speech but from music too.’ Books Ireland, September 2012.