Casey explicitly frames the calculated brutality of British rule during the Great Irish Famine not as a natural disaster but as a colonial crime. Like a visit to the “Scarcity Commission” (p30), the mechanisms of tyranny return like blight to the nation’s rotting potato crops. This is a poetry which witnesses starvation; it witnesses religious and cultural bans, and ultimately, it is witness to the systematic removal of children.
Tag: Irish poetry
A review of Identified Flying Objects by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
While they can be termed as confessional, there’re no calculated calls for pity or sympathy in them, (unlike quite a few contemporary poems). Rather, most poems look at the broader socio-historic picture and compute personal reflections with a sense of objectivity where possible.
A review of Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and other poems by Oisin Breen
But it’s serious, deadly serious. Written with care, and with love for language. At first sight, there seems to be something infernally unruly about Oisín Breen’s poetry, until you spot the fact that the structure is there, recognisable but bloody oneiric, lulling you into a false sense of security and then ripping itself up and changing.
A review of Alchemy by Fiona Perry
Reading Alchemy will excite your imagination. You will travel in a magic carpet to the past and present, the vivid images in the poem will become a painting in your mind. I advise: read each poem a few times and you will, with each reading discover layers of beauty and humanity.