Product Description

In her second book of poems Sinead Morrissey's worlds grow more diverse, encompassing the Orient, the Antipodes, America and an Ireland which recent history has changed: a country observed through eyes that travel and time have made clear, dispassionate and disabused. The poems are still hungry for grace, but in each new geographical and spiritual territory what seems promise is undermined by material and cultural reality; the ceremonies and beliefs of Japan, for example, yield the most colourful spiritual barrenness; and when the poet returns to Ireland it is with a political anger sharpened by the very directness of her vision. Her use of traditional forms is freer and more assured than ever: her wit is visual and semantic, and wonderfully nuanced in her unusual rhythms of speech.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #384732 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

About the Author
Sinead Morrissey was born in Portadown in 1972. She lived in Belfast until 1990. She read English and German at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1990 she received the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, the youngest poet ever to be recognised in this way. Her first book, There Was Fire in Vancouver, won her an Eric Gregory Award and was published by Carcanet in 1996. She lived and taught in Japan, worked in New Zealand, and returned to Northern Ireland where she is now studying for a PhD at Trinity College. She was awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1999 and featured in Carcanet's New Poetries II.

Customer Reviews

Gentle, courageous, shocking
Sinead Morrissey has a reflective, thoughtful poetic voice that can lull you into a false sense of security - then she says the unsayable and you catch your breath. As in the poem "Sea Stones" undoubtedly the most beautiful contemporary poem I have come across in recent years which begins "It is exactly a year today since you slapped me in public." The poem proceeds with her shock at the event before shocking the reader with the unforgettable image: "The truth - that you never were so vivid/or so huge as the second the street turned towards us/in shock - got dropped between us like a fallen match." She can employ traditional forms like the sonnet with ease, but has developed a long, flexible line which is perfect for her measured, meditative tone. This collection is in two parts - the first covering travels, love, eroticism and the second about a residency in Japan. I have come back to read them again and again with increasing pleasure - like all worthwhile poetry they don't yield meanings all at once, but repay repeated readings. With each reading Sinead Morrissey grows in my estimation as one of the best and most important poets of our time. And this volume one of the greatest.