The Ship of Birth records a father's responses in the time immediately
before and after a child is born. Just as material significant to the
dead is placed in a Ship of Death, so this Ship of Birth contains what
is significant to the child: the parents' wonder and trepidation, the
nature of the soul, the child's future growth. The poems draw on a rich
inheritance from the different worlds that Delanty moves among: Ireland
and America, Gaelic and English, traditional verse forms and modern
colloquial, to evoke the subtle interconnections of past and future,
people and places. Greg Delanty acknowledges the dark and difficult
world that the child is entering, while affirming the sustaining
continuity of life.