Having worked at the immortal Book Barn in Niantic for several years and in the book-selling business for decades, Glenn Shea has a pretty good idea of what constitutes commercial potential in the literary world.

It ain't poetry.

Writing poetry, Shea would suggest, is something you have to really want to do - to the extent that you maybe don't even have control over the process.

But it wasn't retail that taught Shea such things.

Shea IS a poet, and his first full-length collection, "Find a Place That Could Pass For Home," was published last fall by Salmon Poetry, one of the most prestigious literary houses in Ireland. He'll read from the book, as well as newer works, Thursday in the Hygienic Art Galleries in New London. It will be Shea's first local appearance since returning from a three-city tour in Ireland after the book's launch.

"If anything could be said to be involuntary, poetry is," says Shea, 58, seated on a comfy chair on the second floor of the main Book Barn structure, surrounded by shelves full of Young Adult volumes from the Hardy Boys to the latest Stephanie Meyer knock-offs. "You might be relaxing — and wanting to relax — or driving to work, and a feeling hits you. POEM HAPPENING! And you can't ignore it. The words won't let you."

Shea describes leaving his post at the Book Barn and, slave to inspiration, wandering around the sculpted grounds of the property, midwife-ing stanzas.

"There'll be a poor woman just looking for her Danielle Steele, and she finds some strange man talking to himself and walking in circles." Shea laughs. "They say Wordsworth would alarm non-locals in such fashion. Citizens would say, 'Don't worry, he's normally very nice.'"

An Irish publishing house might seem a perhaps odd landing spot for "Find a Place That Could Pass For Home." Shea, who lives in Uncasville, has published two chapbooks here in the States, and there is no shortage of esteemed poetry houses here on his home soil. Yet "Shea," after all, is Irish, and the man has spent considerable time absorbing the inspiration and history of the Auld Sod; he's visited Ireland eight times.

What happened is, Shea had only recently finished compiling the manuscript that would become "Find a Place" and had tentatively started to query a few houses. One day, he ran into Book Barn regular James Shay — no relation — a frequent participant in both the New York and Irish arts scenes.

"It was a sheer fluke conversation. Jim had read both my chapbooks and knew I'd spent a lot of time in Ireland," Shea remembers. "He said, 'You should try Salmon Poetry.' And that hadn't occurred to me."

Though the house wasn't accepting submissions at the time, he exchanged e-mails with Jessie Lendennie, the founder and managing editor. Eventually, Shea says, she asked to see the manuscript.

"And ... they bought it," he says. "After 50 years of doing this, it was that easy. I got the e-mail here at the Barn — and I suspect my feet didn't touch the ground the rest of the day."

Communication being what it is in the modern world, Shea didn't actually meet his editor until he got to Ireland for the launch party and tour last October. He read in Galway, Dublin and Ennistymon in County Clare.

"At each event, I was privileged to read with some very fine Irish poets, and my peers and the audience seemed to validate the work. It was very gratifying," Shea says. "My poems don't lay claim to Ireland — and I think maybe a lot of American submissions are about being part of the Irish experience."

Instead, Shea's Irish-inspired pieces are, in his phrase, "exploratory," and it's also true that many other poems in the book are about travel to other destinations — experiences in China, Tibet and Paris, for example — as well as meditations on his life growing up in New England.

"When putting the poems together, I didn't want to confine it to travel, but that is the thematic spine," says Shea, who read the works allowed as part of the regimen of putting the manuscript together. "It's like putting songs on an album. How do they work together in the overall context of rhythm, sound and continuity?"

Shea's poetry is meditative but whimsical, expressionistic and filled with wonder and wry affection — and his painterly vision is supported by a multi-hued ability to turn a phrase. The poems are easy to read and flow over the tongue with riverine grace. At the same time, Shea plays with form and cadence so that to consume several poems at a sitting is like experiencing an array of tidbits at an exotic buffet.

Also, some of the pieces are in homage to contemporaries or poets who came before, and it's in these efforts that an integral essence of Shea's skill surfaces: he's an unabashed fan of poets and poetry, and his joy at the art provides a pure energy that clearly fuels his Muse.

"Am I a fan? Oh, yeah, absolutely," Shea says. He then recounts incidents where he met heroes like Denise Levertov, Frank Bedard, as well as seeing the elderly, frail Eudora Welty read and absolutely blow the crowd away with her power.

"I saw Harold Bloom at R.J. Julia once," Shea remembers, "and he read the prelude to Hart Crane's 'The Bridge.' He actually knew Crane, and Bloom said his greatest regret was that he never heard Crane read his poetry. He said, 'Maybe in heaven.'"

Shea pauses and smiles, thinking about it. "This is a man whose idea of heaven is hearing Hart Crane read his poetry. I just really like that."

If you go

WHO: Poet Glenn Shea

WHAT: Reads from his works, including his most recent publication, "Find a Place That Could Pass For Home." Flock Theater's Patrick Goodnow will sit in and sing Shea's gallows piece, "Jack's Little Piece," ensuring, Shea says, that the audience won't be subjected to "the key of Glenn."

GOOD TO KNOW: Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the reading. It's also stocked at the Book Barn in Niantic as well as Amazon.com.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday

WHERE: Hygienic Art Galleries, 79-83 Bank St., New London.

FOR MORE INFO: (860) 443-8001, hygienic.org.