Cry for the Hot Belly recognizes also the appearance of death in the author’s life as a familiar visitor. Her reconciliation with mortality fosters a new freedom in which Kerry Hardie discovers a point of arrival: ‘I don’t have to remember or hold on. / I live this now, it is deep in the life.’
‘She looks like the real thing alright, an original talent. Discovering her work reminds me of the pleasurable shock of hearing Medbh McGuckian’s poetry for the first time.’
— Michael Longley, Poetry Ireland Review
Kerry Hardie’s second collection extends the wonder, the ‘small deep awe’ of its precursor, A Furious Place. To the calm reflection of ‘Monaghan Solstice’ and other landscapes ‘lit from elsewhere’, she introduces (in ‘Exiles’) a narrative sweep embracing generations and questions of nationality.