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This is a book of great clarity. Its poems draw strength from the twin securities of family and place before striking out boldly to engage with themes of death and loss. D\u00f3nall Dempsey\u2019s new collection deftly shows readers how: \u2018[t]he flag of self unfurls \/ snaps into the lost moment.\u2019 (\u2018Walking from the Rising Sun to Kildare Town\u2019). This is especially apparent in poems like \u2018Follow the Leader\u2019 where the writer\u2019s daughter prompts this unfurling, teaching him not simply to recognise but: \u2018to be \/ the world that she \/ can see \/ (half invention \/ half discovery) \u2026\u2019 Many of Dempsey\u2019s poems take up this ontological challenge, asking us to consider how our being in the world is shaped by complex interaction with close relatives and friends. In short, Gerry Sweeney\u2019s Mammy<\/em> celebrates our fundamental interconnectedness, the strength of that human chain outlasting the home place or family tree. \u2018Journey of a Smile\u2019 finds just such continuity behind each smile in an old photo album:<\/p>\n It pays no attention or place or place Different people Each generation This perspective ensures that the elegant poems of personal recollection, found throughout the book, work cumulatively to produce a thoroughly inclusive experience for readers. Oh what a thing it was I, in due course thunderstorm Later, the poem \u2018In the Mythology of Foxes\u2019 offers the same semantic pairing in counterpointing an uncle\u2019s shooting of a fox: \u2018the fearful thunder \/\/ of his gun \/ had ended everything\u2019 with his nephew\u2019s shocked response: \u2018trying to comfort her \/ with his human tears.\u2019 Many of the poems in Gerry Sweeney\u2019s Mammy seek to recover this humanitas at the heart of things. It is present in the frequent intertextual allusions to Donne, Herbert, Hopkins, and Chaucer. In \u2018Till Human Voices Wake Us\u2019 even snow takes part in the search:<\/p>\n the human snow now This is a book of great humanity; in \u2018Hithering and Tithering Waters Of..\u2019 the poet reads Joyce to his daughter as a bedtime story. Her response will be shared by many readers of this fine volume:<\/p>\n Beside the tickling waters of. She loves the music of it all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Richard Hawtree<\/strong>‘s poems have appeared in British and Irish literary magazines including: The Stinging Fly<\/i>, Banshee<\/i>, SOUTH, <\/i>and The Penny Dreadful<\/i>. He has taught medieval literature at University College Cork and Creative Writing at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nto gender<\/p>\n
\nin history.<\/p>\n
\nlay claim to it.<\/p>\n
\nborrows it
\n[\u2026]<\/p>\n
\nBut above all else, this is a book that revels in the mysterious power of words, in the conviction that: \u2018language is lava \/\/ the mind is molten \/ always flowing\u2019 (\u2018Hithering and Tithering Waters Of..\u2019). And so a pyroclastic flow from Joyce\u2019s Finnegan\u2019s Wake occasionally disrupts these texts, enriching their poetic soil with a thunderword ending in \u2018[\u2026] TOOHOOHOORDENENTHURNUK!\u2019 (\u2018How Not To Swear When One Is Swearing\u2019). Indeed, thunder itself is an important unifying device in this collection, a marker of self-discovery that is frequently linked to the poet\u2019s acknowledgment of the human. Early in the collection we read:<\/p>\n
\nbeing human.<\/p>\n
\nwas an about-to-be<\/p>\n
\nclumping about the evening
\n[\u2026]
\n(\u2018O Words are Poor Receipts for What Time Hath Stole Away\u2019)<\/p>\n
\ntears in its eyes
\nthe snow smiles<\/p>\n
\nboth
\ninside\/outside
\n[\u2026]<\/p>\n
\nBeside the chuckling waters of.
\nBeside the laughing waters of.<\/p>\n