‘The collection strikes me as almost utterly unusual, awesome, in its way. The straightness, with no sign of facile hype or self-congratulation; the rhymes, somehow, against the odds not belying but bringing home some truths in a fresh voice and vantage point’ – John Felstiner, Stanford University

'This book is a series of poem-sequences in witness to the Holocaust of the European Jews... What distinguishes this book is the great skill and sensitivity with which these events are selected and told. O'Siadhail calls on an array of traditional verse forms, these being among the most serviceable vessels we have for carrying overwhelmingly difficult emotional content (think of Wilfred Owen's sonnets on the agonies of trench warfare when reading O'Siadhail's sonnets set in the camps)... Think of other poem sequences dealing with such material, for example Ruth Whitman's The Testing of Hannah Senesh. In the best of them, as in that book and here, an infinitely-long story, untellable in its entirety, is condensed into a few intense images, a sequence of clear and resonate notes' - Sarah Kafatou, Harvard Review

‘This is nothing short of the history of the holocaust, from Hitler’s ascent to power to the liberation of the camps and the aftermath. This is an extraordinary and wonderful work’ - David Hanley, The Enchanted Way, RTE Radio 1

‘The Gossamer Wall is really one long narrative poem, which addresses meticulously, and with great sensitivity, that most evil episode in human history when civilised man coldly planned and carried out the extermination of six million men, women, and children for the crime of being different. The book is an exceptional achievement, evidence of the poet’s wounded fascination before such human evil and testifying to a painstaking labour of something akin to outraged love for all those who suffered’ - Patsy McGarry, The Irish Times

‘This is a beautiful book. Thank you for writing it’ - Peter Tiefenbach, CBC Radio 1

‘His book, which argues the importance of not narrowing down life in all its jazzy, rich complexity to the ideologies of blood and soil, also carries some chilling Eastern European resonances… I believe that work such as O’Siadhail’s help us to hear the stifled voices – the voices of the six million whose voices can be heard behind the gossamer wall' - Declan McCormack, The Sunday Independent

‘Nobody immediately thinks of a book of poems as a page-turner. Yet you pick up Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Gossamer Wall and you won’t put it down without reading it from beginning to end' - Ciaran Carty, The Sunday Tribune

‘O'Siadhail personalises both captives and victims, which allows him to humanise them for us or give them back to us as real human beings and not numbers or ranks.... This is all in all a fascinating book, a book of windows into terror we in our soft Irishness cannot begin to imagine. It's a credit to Micheal O'Siadhail and a brutal reminder to us all' - Fred Johnston, Books Ireland