‘My father’s father took his chance/on the first flight over Lisfannon.’ So begins a poem in Frank McGuinness’s eighth collection, The River Crana, a book equally at home in Donegal as Japan and ancient Illyria. His poems have been praised by Seán Hewitt in The Irish Times for their ‘dark contours and gothic atmosphere, their sensory detail and sly humour’ — traits clear in this new book in which ‘Buncrana, Christmas Eve’ is vividly evocative of the author’s home town in his childhood. From poems of empathy with the death of Sylvia Plath and the lost children of Pompeii, anything is possible: ‘I might yet learn,’ he writes, ‘to drive a lorry.’
A restless imagination . . . a writer of openness and adventure — especially, and consistently, to varieties of identity, political, gendered, sexual . . . original, entertaining, steadfast in their contemplation of colour and darkness. — Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Dublin Review of Books
Additional information
Weight | N/A |
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Choose Type | Hardback, Paperback |
Book Information
Publication date: 22 May 2025
Details: 64pp
ISBN PBK: 978 1 91133 898 7
ISBN HBK: 978 1 91133 899 4
Cover: ‘Path by a Large Tree’ by Mary Swanzy © Artist’s Estate
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