Description
For twenty years Micheal O'Siadhail's beloved wife, Brid, suffered from Parkinson's disease. These love poems chronicle the last two years of her life, her death and his grief. In Love Life, now available again in his Collected Poems, he told their story of over three decades of marriage. In this sonnet sequence their love faces illness and death and sounds the depths of parting. There is a tenderness, intensity and gratitude which will resonate with those who know both love and loss.
Book launch event on 29 September at The Royal Hibernian Academy (Ely Place, Dublin), hosted by the Chief Justice of Ireland, Susan Denham.
About the Author
Micheal O'Siadhail [pronounced Mee-hall Oh Sheel] is a prolific Irish poet whose work sets the intensities of a life against the background of worlds shaken by change. His Collected Poems (2013) draws on thirteen previous collections, nine of these published by Bloodaxe, including Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems (1992), Our Double Time (1998), Poems 1975-1995 (1999), The Gossamer Wall: poems in witness to the Holocaust (2002), Love Life (2005), Globe (2007) and Tongues (2010). It was followed by One Crimson Thread (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), his book of essays, Say But the Word: Poetry as Vision and Voice, ed. David F Ford & Margie M. Tolstoy (Carysfort Press, 2015), and The Five Quintets (Baylor University Press, US, 2018). He constantly seeks new dimensions through his poetry: examining the passions of friendship, marriage, trust and betrayal in an urban culture, tracing the intricacies of music and science as he tries to shape an understanding of the shifts and transformations of late modernity. In Musics of Belonging: The Poetry of Micheal O'Siadhail (Carysfort Press, 2007), the book's co-editor David F. Ford lists O'Siadhail's characteristic themes as 'despair, women, love, friendship, language, school, vocation, music, city life, science and other cultures and histories. There is a wrestle for meaning, with no easy resolution - both the form and the content are hard-won.' Jazz is a leitmotiv throughout his work. Born in 1947, he was educated at Clongowes Wood College, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Oslo. He has been a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Among his many academic works are Learning Irish (Yale University Press, 1988) and Modern Irish (Cambridge University Press, 1989). He is a fluent speaker of a surprising number and range of languages, including Norwegian, Icelandic, German, Welsh and Japanese. As well as some of the great English-language writers (Donne, Milton, Yeats, Kavanagh), his main influences include much literature in other languages, read and assimilated in the original (Irish monastic and folk poetry, Dante, Rilke, Paul Valery, Karin Boye, the Eddas and the Sagas). In 1987 he resigned his professorship order to write poetry full-time, supported by giving numerous readings in many parts of the world. He won the Marten Toonder Prize for Literature in 1998. He now divides his time between Dublin and New York.
Reviews
I read slowly, carefully and with deep emotion, One Crimson Thread. It is a beautiful, beautiful but terribly sad poem of love. -- Jean Vanier
In this poignant and hopeful sequence of poems, Micheal O'Siadhail explores how a devoted husband and wife respond and adjust when she is greatly altered by Parkinson's disease, examining his states of mind and feeling, his daily adjustments her changing personality, and finally his sorrow and brokenness at her death. Yet at the spiritual heart of this sequence are the ways in which the poems courageously show how the couple's deep-rooted love searches for ways to overcome her debilitating illness, their fear and dread, and their eventual loss. The vivid image of the title of these linked sonnets demonstrates that their love always connects these lovers by an incorruptible, unbreakable "crimson thread". As the poet memorably writes: "I hush you in my arms to tell you how / This suffering still sounds our depths of love. -- Joseph Heininger
O'Siadhail seems to rise to a new intensity of writing and analysis in this collection. This is both a searing and a beautiful interrogation...it offers immense compassion and consolation. -- Martyn Halsall * Church Times (Christmas Books 2015) *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780371276
Author Micheal O'Siadhail
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Book launch event on 29 September at The Royal Hibernian Academy (Ely Place, Dublin), hosted by the Chief Justice of Ireland, Susan Denham.
About the Author
Micheal O'Siadhail [pronounced Mee-hall Oh Sheel] is a prolific Irish poet whose work sets the intensities of a life against the background of worlds shaken by change. His Collected Poems (2013) draws on thirteen previous collections, nine of these published by Bloodaxe, including Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems (1992), Our Double Time (1998), Poems 1975-1995 (1999), The Gossamer Wall: poems in witness to the Holocaust (2002), Love Life (2005), Globe (2007) and Tongues (2010). It was followed by One Crimson Thread (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), his book of essays, Say But the Word: Poetry as Vision and Voice, ed. David F Ford & Margie M. Tolstoy (Carysfort Press, 2015), and The Five Quintets (Baylor University Press, US, 2018). He constantly seeks new dimensions through his poetry: examining the passions of friendship, marriage, trust and betrayal in an urban culture, tracing the intricacies of music and science as he tries to shape an understanding of the shifts and transformations of late modernity. In Musics of Belonging: The Poetry of Micheal O'Siadhail (Carysfort Press, 2007), the book's co-editor David F. Ford lists O'Siadhail's characteristic themes as 'despair, women, love, friendship, language, school, vocation, music, city life, science and other cultures and histories. There is a wrestle for meaning, with no easy resolution - both the form and the content are hard-won.' Jazz is a leitmotiv throughout his work. Born in 1947, he was educated at Clongowes Wood College, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Oslo. He has been a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Among his many academic works are Learning Irish (Yale University Press, 1988) and Modern Irish (Cambridge University Press, 1989). He is a fluent speaker of a surprising number and range of languages, including Norwegian, Icelandic, German, Welsh and Japanese. As well as some of the great English-language writers (Donne, Milton, Yeats, Kavanagh), his main influences include much literature in other languages, read and assimilated in the original (Irish monastic and folk poetry, Dante, Rilke, Paul Valery, Karin Boye, the Eddas and the Sagas). In 1987 he resigned his professorship order to write poetry full-time, supported by giving numerous readings in many parts of the world. He won the Marten Toonder Prize for Literature in 1998. He now divides his time between Dublin and New York.
Reviews
I read slowly, carefully and with deep emotion, One Crimson Thread. It is a beautiful, beautiful but terribly sad poem of love. -- Jean Vanier
In this poignant and hopeful sequence of poems, Micheal O'Siadhail explores how a devoted husband and wife respond and adjust when she is greatly altered by Parkinson's disease, examining his states of mind and feeling, his daily adjustments her changing personality, and finally his sorrow and brokenness at her death. Yet at the spiritual heart of this sequence are the ways in which the poems courageously show how the couple's deep-rooted love searches for ways to overcome her debilitating illness, their fear and dread, and their eventual loss. The vivid image of the title of these linked sonnets demonstrates that their love always connects these lovers by an incorruptible, unbreakable "crimson thread". As the poet memorably writes: "I hush you in my arms to tell you how / This suffering still sounds our depths of love. -- Joseph Heininger
O'Siadhail seems to rise to a new intensity of writing and analysis in this collection. This is both a searing and a beautiful interrogation...it offers immense compassion and consolation. -- Martyn Halsall * Church Times (Christmas Books 2015) *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780371276
Author Micheal O'Siadhail
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
