Titles from The Gallery Press that are appearing Books of the Year 2021 listings are (so far):
Link: Poet and World by Vona Groarke
Vona Groarke’s Link: Poet and world is a deceptively simple, oddly philosophical sequence about being visited during lockdown. — John Kerrigan TLS Books of the Year 2021
Vona Groarke’s Link features the poet in a witty disturbing conversation with a personified pandemic “World”. — Martina Evans, The Irish Times Books of the Year
Selected Poems by John McAuliffe
John McAuliffe’s rich Selected Poems demonstrates his edgy shape-shifting sense of place becoming increasingly prophetic and profound. — Martina Evans, The Irish Times Books of the Year
I love John McAuliffe’s Selected Poems (Gallery) for the way that ordinary things are rendered and rhythm handled so deftly and artfully. — Colm Tóibín, The Guardian, Best Books of 2021
Every McAuliffe poem is an event, a world that is instantly recognisable although we need McAuliffe’s eyes and ears to open that particular door. Attuned to every nuance of place, firmly planted in the physical world, the poems evoke the tricky passage of time and the instability of place in a changing world. His dexterous sleight of hand– conjuring the fragility of a tent, a household, a bridge— is such a joyous feat, a fresh look, ultimately a celebration of life as a dangerous but exhilarating tight-rope walk. — Martina Evans, Poetry Books of the Year, Ars Notoria
The Poison Glen by Annemarie Ní Churreáin
Finally, new talent shines in Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s The Poison Glen, which has a base in the Donegal Gaeltacht and a ghastly backstory in the industrial schools, mother and baby homes and other institutions of church and state. — John Kerrigan TLS Books of the Year 2021
The worst illiterate is the political illiterate’, Brecht once wrote, and in Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s fierce second collection The Poison Glen, we have a poet who is not afraid to address the political legacy of Irish church and State malfeasance especially with respect to the care of women and children. ‘Who am I lost to?’ Ní Churreáin writes poignantly in ‘Fagan’s Eagles’, and in ‘The Screaming Room’, there are these powerful words, ‘I come from women who found themselves / in trouble, who turned to their pale reflections / and asked “What can I do? What can I do?” / All that fire, all that burning. In their honour / I can never be silent again.’ — Paul Perry, Sunday Independent, Books of the Year
The Poison Glen by Annemarie Ní Churreáin. One of the jewels of the year arriving late in the Autumn, this collection is a Gallery Press masterpiece, presented beautifully in paperback and clothbound. Only Gallery can produce books of this understated loveliness; the art of fine book-making is almost gone from this world. Her first book, Bloodroot, came from Doire Press in 2017, but Poison Glen is a huge advance in four years, a greater leap into complexity of relationships and intensity of politics and history. Referring often to Brian Lacey’s ‘Lugh’s Forgotten Donegal Kingdom’ (Four Courts), she has created not a Lacey-work but a lattice-work of astonishing complexity in terms of myth, geography, topography, heraldry, social history and childhood trauma. Seven institutions of Reform and Industry are referenced in many of the poems that have grown ‘in the aftermath of the orphanage.’ Here in ‘the Foundling Crib’ and ‘Sowthistle’ and ‘To Hold in the Light’ Ní Churreáin lays bare the soul of our suffering island, the abandonment and brutality of life, the painful truth of things. But there are lighter moments, love moments, family moments, companionship moments, in poems such as ‘A Charm to Protect a Girlchild’ and ‘Will you write a Bird for Us?’ there are benign and life-affirming forces at work, creating buoyancy in a deep and demanding collection. A gifted Donegal-woman, youthful and lyrical, Ní Churreáin is one of the sure voices of the future. You need to own this collection. — Thomas McCarthy
The Poems (1961-2020) by Derek Mahon
Derek Mahon’s The Poems (1961-2020), his final publication, containing all the poems he wished to be preserved, is one of the most important Irish poetry publications of the year . . . sensuous and sometimes shocking. — Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times, Books of the Year
Derek Mahon’s The Poems (1961–2020) brings together, in final form, all the verse he wished to preserve. A variorum will have to wait — there is a lot of life in Mahon’s variants — but this huge compilation is neither a catalogue nor a catafalque. — John Kerrigan TLS Books of the Year 2021
Derek Mahon’s The Poems 1961-2020, published a year after his death, displays a rich talent, formalist and casual, witty and melancholy, minimalist and expansive. — Colm Tóibín, The New Statesman
Derek Mahon’s collection The Poems 1961-2020 (the Gallery Press) gathers the fruits of a remarkable life in poetry. His wry, sensitive poems are often written in formal shapes but have the juiciness and wit of everyday speech. — Joseph O’Connor, Sunday Independent, Top Page Turners of 2021
I hugely enjoyed Derek Mahon’s The Poems 1961-2020 (Gallery Press) — Claire Keegan, Sunday Independent, Top Page Turners of 2021
The Poems by Derek Mahon (Gallery Press, €22.50)
With Derek Mahon’s death in October 2020, the world lost one of the great modern lyric poets. From Night-Crossing (1968) to Washing Up (2020), he fashioned an oeuvre of rare elegance, wit and visionary reach. “Even now there are places where a thought might grow”, begins his best known poem, A Disused Shed in Co Wexford, snatching its moment of triumph from the violent panorama of history. Mahon was a lifelong self-revisioner, and monumental though it is, this post-revisions volume will not be to everyone’s taste, with some key omissions making it a Collected rather than a Complete Poems. Still, the work endures, “rinsing the choked mud, keeping the colours new”. — Aingeal Clare, The Guardian
The Important Things by Audrey Molloy
Other striking debuts include the witty and sophisticated Audrey Molloy’s The Important Things (Gallery, €11.95) — Martina Evans, The Irish Times Books of the Year
The Time Being by John FitzGerald
. . . sensuous and sometimes shocking, as is John Fitzgerald’s The Time Being (Gallery, €11.95) — Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times, Books of the Year
Int
imate City by Peter Sirr
I was quickly drawn into Peter Sirr’s prose work, Intimate City, which wanders through the back streets of Dublin. Look out for the essay on curtains. — John Kerrigan TLS Books of the Year 2021
Peter Sirr’s Intimate City (The Gallery Press) wonderfully blends the personal and factual. — Caitríona Lally, Sunday Independent, Top Page Turners of 2021
The Limit of Light by Grace Wilentz
Other striking debuts include . . . Grace Wilentz’s thoughtful slow burn, The Limit of Light (€11.95). — Martina Evans, The Irish Times Books of the Year
Autumn Skies by Derek Mahon
Autumn Skies, Gallery Press’s essays about Mahon’s poems, includes Paul Muldoon’s controversial re-reading of ‘Everything is Going to Be All Right’. — John O’Donnell, Sunday Independent, Top Page Turners of 2021
