Irish mythology and the way in which emotional and sexual power-struggles unfold in them have become very important to poet Katie Donovan. The title poem of her assured, original new collection, Entering The Mare, is both chilling and powerful in its reading of male/female relations. "When I was in Trinity, I was in a class taught by Brendan Kennelly on mythology in Irish literature," she says. "I became very interested in the ways in which Irish writers have used myths - such as Joyce's structural and thematic use in Ulysses, Synge's lyricism in a heart-rending play like Deirdre Of The Sorrows and of course, Yeats in his Cuchulainn cycle where he explores timeless human relationships in language which is both simple and beautiful."

Central to her subversive, subtle work is a contrasting tension of extremes honed by disarming candour, detachment, intense emotion and violent, savage imagery. The symbol of the goddess which dominates several of the poems is both all-powerful and vulnerable, usually personified as the Celtic horse deity, Epona. Characteristically, her interpretation is based on extremes - the power and the vulnerability of the horse; its assertion and passivity. Thoughtful and precise, Donovan's tough, compassionate, practical intelligence is tempered by humour, grace and a pleasure in playfulness - a word she likes and often uses. Much of the clever trickery of her first collection, Watermelon Man has yielded to a wry, more knowing tone as evident in Mak- ing Shapes which takes a blackly comic, deadly serious look at the folly of breast augmentation. "Playfulness for me is important as a way of using words to catch or express something you know, or feel, but aren't really sure of." Entering The Mare continues to explore the themes of emotional and physical need but, aware of her reputation as an erotic poet, she stresses, "my work's not just about sex, there's travel, history, religion, folklore. . . " Her exasperation is funny, but it is also sharp. Donovan has an impatience with the physical denials and dehumanising aspects of religion.

"There's such a coldness about the way fertility is presented. The Virgin Mary is, what? A woman in a blue dress who has been denied a body and normal human emotions." She admits she neither understands nor accepts our coy reaction to things bodily. "I don't understand how a natural, important and very serious happening such as having a period is so taboo. Here is a very radical event caused by a body preparing to take an egg and make a baby. If there is no egg, and no baby, there is a great evacuation - an act of house-cleaning - that must take place. Its significance as evidence of creation and fertility is lost in the usual Christian denial of the woman's physical experience, the preference being to exalt the sterile blood of the dying Christ on the cross."

Readings for her are very enjoyable: "I like reading my poems to listeners, I enjoy seeing the reactions." Audience reactions are also telling. A poem such as "Underneath Our Skirts" (which explores the double standard described above) has not only proved important to her as a poet, it has also given her valuable cultural insights. Women sometimes respond with discomfort. "They're embarrassed, I've read it in schools, and have seen the girls looking at each other. But then I read it in an all-boys school in Bangor and it was wonderful, they understood what I was saying. They could relate to it through experience of girls they knew - sisters, friends." One boy even raised the question of the ridiculous marketing of sanitary towels on TV. "They have these pads flying around with wings," he said, incredulously.

There is nothing defiant about her feminism which is raw and felt, yet measured; the experience she explores is individual not ideological. The woman is often battered and exploited such as Macha in "Macha's Curse" (based on a story from The Tain). "I always liked that story," she says and her version which presents the husband as "a small man/ with nothing to speak of" then tells the story of a heavily pregnant wife being forced to race against horses in order to satisfy her husband's ego. The surreal narrative is both horrific and funny, extremes she likes juxtasposing. "It's also funny, there's Macha giving birth to her two beautiful children in front of everyone, she's angry and exhausted and not giving a damn and then placing this curse on the men who forced her to run the race, condemning them to suffer labour pains whenever they are most in need of their strength."

While she has avoided much of the defiance which tends to dominate poetry from a female perspective, she acknowledges the desire for revenge. Many of her love poems are confrontational; laments and farewells, moments of remembered love, not celebratory songs. There are exceptions such as "These Last Days" in which the narrator is the hunter, not object: "Like a whirlwind/coning down, /I'm peeling the brittle skin/ of these last days/without you." Self-exposing, even naked, writing poetry for her happens "when I'm existing in a subconscious, dreamy, trance-like state. Emotion comes bubbling through. I write a lot, about 70 per cent of it never sees the light of day." A specific dream inspired "Neck" which on one level is the story of a young woman facing death during the French Revolution charged with being different, beyond class, "She remembers running hungry/through large, dishevelled rooms" but it is expresses the plight of any outsider. An earlier poem "Ophelia" sees her directly acquiring the voice of an individual suspended between life and death.

Born in 1962 of an Irish father and Canadian mother, Donovan's poetic voices catches something of this dual cultural legacy. She is also conscious of belonging to a cosmopolitan generation of young Irish poets whose experience of travel has broadened, even liberated, the cultural references and relevances of much contemporary Irish poetry. "Making Terms" is an early sequence of poems written during a year spent teaching in a Hungarian village. "Hungary has been invaded so often, and I was struck by the poignancy of the fact that they have not lost their language."

Interestingly, to date her work has been more personal than autobiographical. This new collection consolidates the emergence of an original voice, one which at times ponders, reports and elsewhere, challenges. It also has a stronger emphasis on narrative than her first collection. "As I've got older I've become more interested in other people's stories, and I've experienced more of life myself. Also, I'm naturally curious." In contrast to the drama of the title poem, or the barbed realism of "Horse Sense" which contrasts the natural mating ritual of the horse with the enforced covering of a mare in a farmyard, is the gentle beauty of "Tenterhooks" (the story of her three cousins who ran Avoca Handweavers for 40 years), "Totem" (dedicated to her Iroquois ancestor) and "New York City, 1947" addressed to her mother: "You were ten years old,/on your first journey/to the gleaming fruit,/that was ripe/for eating then."

Journalism, she feels may have made her use of language "bare, less lyrical" however it has also sharpened her writing. Exactness, detachment and compression are certainly shaping Donovan's taut, challenging deliberate poems.

Entering The Mare by Katie Donovan is published by Bloodaxe Books at £6.95.