“Patrick Deeley’s imaginative strength springs from his childhood in the west of Ireland, a life close to and involved with nature. But this is no simplistic nature poetry, the poems are rich – as is the soil – with contradictions, growth and failure, life and death, beauty and horror. If Deeley stoops “to decipher the scripture of the wood” he is yet aware that even the human is fragile and will pass back into that soil. The forms of the poems echo this watchful care, their stanzas shaped, their language poised and cautious. This volume of new and selected poems is a rich and a rigorous achievement.”
— John F. Deane“Though a number of Irish poets have written about the great changes in Ireland during the last ten to fifteen years, none have done it as beautifully, as potently as Deeley.”
— Contrary (USA)“Deeley restores a degree of the mystery that inheres in the natural world and the magic in the sounds of words.”
— Kirkus Reviews (USA)
ISBN 978 1 906614 73 7 Paperback
140 x 216 mm, 226 pp
April 2013
