“Ciaran Berry’s work, like Emily Brontë’s, possesses the rare quality of ‘power of wing’. He can enter imaginatively into the life of a hive of bees or the death of a rogue elephant, and he holds the door open for the reader.”
Helen Dunmore
“It is impossible to read Tess Gallagher's poems without being drawn into their mesmerizing rhythms.”
Joyce Carol Oates
Ciaran Berry’s first collection, The Sphere of Birds, was one of the most praised debuts of recent years, winning the Crab Orchard, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Award. His new collection, The Dead Zoo, which takes its name from the nickname for Dublin’s Natural History Museum, confirms his reputation as a leading Irish poet of his generation. Whether writing about a basking shark caught off the coast of Clare, a rogue elephant in Coney Island or John Cage’s 4’33, Berry brings an eye for the arresting image to poems rich in empathy, detail and imagination.
“There may be no American poet more overdue for an anthology than Tess Gallagher” wrote The Seattle Times on the publication of Midnight Lantern, a collection of poems from a forty-year career that has included several books of short stories, a dozen poetry collections and numerous awards. Whether exploring the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, a conversation with a Bhuddist nun, or the loss of her husband Raymond Carver, Midnight Lantern displays Gallagher’s unfailing mastery of image, rhythm and sound. Presented in association with Poetry Ireland.