'In her debut collection, The Beating Heart, Denise O’Hagan takes Father Time as her muse. Timelessness, timeliness, and time-signatures abound in a collection that features O’Hagan’s trademarked musicality. Her poetry is rhythmical and melodic, with rhyme, half-rhyme, alliteration, and assonance her favoured forms of wordplay. O’Hagan has an ear for words that work together to trip off the tongue in pleasing patterns. At times the words waltz across the page; at others, the text clings close to the left-hand margin. Although Father Time may be O’Hagan’s main muse, other family members and their time on Earth – equal to the duration of The Beating Heart of the title – are also focal points of the poems. Mother, grandmother, and infant son are the subjects of several sequences in this engaging collection.' (Introduction)