New from Smith/Doorstop
We're delighted to announce the launch of Michael McCarthy's new collection, 'At the Races' – the overall winner in the 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition.
This title is available to buy from The Poetry Business and Inpress. The cover price is £8.95 and Friends of The Poetry Business are entitled to a 25% discount when they order direct from us.
'At the Races' will be launched tonight at The Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, as part of the Off the Shelf festival. Michael McCarthy will be reading alongside Michael Schmidt. All welcome – call 0114 275 7727 for information and tickets.
At the Races – Michael McCarthy
£8.95 – 978-1-906613-09-9
Michael McCarthy grew up on a farm in West Cork, Ireland. His first poetry collection
Birds’ Nests and Other Poems
won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. His children’s books have been
translated into seventeen languages. He works as a priest in North
Yorkshire.'At the Races' was the overall winner of the 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition.
'What I love about Michael’s poetry is the extraordinary specific detail, the pictures painted by the juxtaposition of words. It sings with a poetic intelligence. It moves me: the people, the memories, the vividness of detail.' — Sinead Cusack
‘There’s a country where you’ll have the wit to name a field the cabbage garden; there’s another where you’ll name the living water nothing more than Cold Hill Pond; and there’s this pair of old incorrigibles, lost, not lost, in conversation. There’s a life lived there and here and always among people, mostly poor, apostles. There’s a parishful of poems: a circle of small shells / their ears to the ground. Any moment / now, the waters break. You wouldn’t want to miss it.’ – Gillian Allnutt
AT THE RACES
7 July 2007
In the dream my nephew, who is called after me
meets me at the races. He tells me I’m on yesterday’s video.
I remember yesterday, and where I was among the crowd.
I was in the grass paddock beside the hayshed,
standing on a rock above the furze machine.
It was around 1957. ‘There you are’ he says,
pointing up at the big screen.
I see myself coming towards me.
I’m wearing that checked grey overcoat.
I walk out of the screen past myself and notice
the overcoat is baggy. I’m bulkier than I thought.
As I walk up the terrace steps I observe myself
from the back. My hair is standing up. Thicker
than I remember. It’s turning from grey to black.
When I look again at the screen the video is finished.
I want to see the playback. The remote is out of reach.
I’m looking for a window-opener, or that long handled
candle-snuffer, when a woman asks me if she can help.
She gets the tape, a reel to reel, puts it into the machine.
I ask if it can be fast forwarded. She says not.
I’ll have to watch it from the start.
The Poetry Business receives financial assistance from Arts Council England.
