Description
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2011
With a hint of Auden’s formal patterns, John McAuliffe’s direct, intriguing poems are simultaneously grounded in the twenty-first century and alive to images and voices from the ancient and recent past. From the implicit surprise or exclamation of its title to the literal reach of all locations, Of All Places embraces Roger Casement, Batman, the last Yahi Indian, the cultures of Stonehenge and Tara, and a former taoiseach in the company of someone ‘who might be his daughter’. It re-enters Yeats’s west of Ireland and visits America’s West Coast. An ‘archive’ broadcast jolts a time lag into focus and conjures connections between historic taproots and contemporary concerns. John McAuliffe’s truncated narratives, their ‘exemplary control . . . relish for language . . . and his poems’ capacity to retain a sense of their own spontaneity’ (Tim Liardet, Poetry Review) promise their readers: ‘The known world and the unseen, to which you’ll come back: that is, the point of departure, the destination, and all points in between.’ — from ‘Old Style’