**** WINNER OF THE LAUREL PRIZE 2021 **
**
**A SPECTATOR AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES / UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK YOUNG
WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN POLLARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL POETRY
PRIZE 2021**
****SHORTLISTED FOR THE DALKEY LITERARY EMERGING WRITER OF THE YEAR
AWARD 2021**
**
A remarkable first collection by an important new poet
In this collection, Seán Hewitt gives us poems of a rare musicality and
grace. By turns searing and meditative, these are lyrics concerned with
the matter of the world, its physicality, but also attuned to the
proximity of each moment, each thing, to the spiritual.
Here, there is sex, grief, and loss, but also a committed dedication to
life, hope and renewal. Drawing on the religious, the sacred and the
profane, this is a collection in which men meet in the woods, where
matter is corrupted and remade. There are prayers, hymns, vespers,
incantations, and longer poems which attempt to propel themselves
towards the transcendent.
In this book, there is always the sense of fragility allied with
strength, a violence harnessed and unleashed. The collection ends with a
series of elegies for the poet's father: in the face of despair, we are
met with a fierce brightness, and a reclamation of the spiritual. 'This
is when / we make God, and speak in his voice.'
Paying close attention to altered states and the consolations and
strangeness of the natural world, this is the first book from a major
poet.
