In Double Negative, her seventh collection, Vona Groarke considers the subject of ageing, fearlessly exploring its culverts and cul-de-sacs while also checking this earnestness with sharp wit and trademark style. Here candour is mediated by humour. These are sensual and sensitive poems, written in language asked to be beautiful, wry and true about topics usually either ignored or obscured with greyness and cliché.
Hailed by The Irish Times as ‘a poet of great self-awareness and meticulous craft’, Vona Groarke’s Selected Poems was praised as a ‘collection of almost sublime purity’ (Dublin Review of Books).
Double Negative breaks new ground in subject and approach. It is a daring and distinguished work from one of Ireland’s leading poets.
Groarke’s fine lyricism and wit are present as never before, the humour more mordant, the vision darker; yet the poems are so exact and fine, it is an exhilarating read . . . This is a collection to exult in. — Martina Evans, The Irish Times
It is Vona Groarke's poetic imagination and her capacity to grab our attention and wrestle that attention to the floor that is most impressive. Images, words, colour and pacing working together to wake the reader and entice them into the poet’s vision . . . It is this and very much more. This is a collection that sparkles with imagination and wit, a collection to be read on any occasion as there is solace, innovation and fun in it. A collection for the ages. — Seán O'Hogain, Dublin Review of Books
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Book Information
Publication date: 27 June 2019
Details: 80pp
ISBN PBK: 978 1 91133 769 0
ISBN HBK: 978 1 91133 770 6
Cover: ‘Four Apricots on a Stone Plinth’ (1698) by Adriaen Coorte / Rijksmuseum
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