Ruth Finnegan's prize-winning epic romance novel, The Black Inked Pearl, was inspired by her own dreams. Perhaps these dreams grew from her subconscious or were somehow shreds of memories from past lives, dating back to the Middle Ages or beyond. Either way, heroine Kate was born: a young Irish girl who runs from her mysterious lover, changes her mind, and, in a heartbreaking search, spends the rest of her life trying to find his love again. The poems show us the torments, delights, and travails of love as Kate travels through them - most searingly perhaps in the image of the locked- up heart or, in a different way, the agonising sudden doubt of the last line of ”If”. They can bring it home to ourselves as well as we, too, experience the highs and lows of passion. And more than this. Like other poetry in the mystic tradition they carry deep metaphoric weight too, speaking not just of human life and love but, through them, of the mysteries of eternity and of our human journey within it. Love may be the sweetest, simplest, thing in the world, but as poignantly traced in these moving poems, its path can be long and hard.