Where Now Begins

by Kerry Hardie

Overview

These poems are the work of time and the cycles of growth, they are songs about saints and scholars, the natural world, exaltation and suffering and ordinary joy. There are narratives of the wondrous bewilderments of life, as well as homages to the dead and the dying, and to their courageous desperate attempts to reach beyond the veil of the ‘now’ to an understanding of ‘how the subtle relationships that had once seemed so open and simple/wove themselves in and out of their dreams’. These poems are the quiet accumulation of the slowly learned lessons of a lived life, a life which has reached its October – ‘October lined with gold’.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780375106
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kerry Hardie was born in 1951 and grew up in County Down. She now lives in County Kilkenny with her husband, the writer Seán Hardie. Her poems have won many prizes, including the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry in 2005. Her poems have featured in six Bloodaxe anthologies: Staying Alive, Being Alive, Being Human, The Poetry Cure, The New Irish Poets and Modern Women Poets. She has published six collections with Gallery Press: A Furious Place (1996), Cry for the Hot Belly (2000), The Sky Didn’t Fall (2003), The Silence Came Close (2006), Only This Room (2009) and The Ash and the Oak and the Wild Cherry Tree (2012). Her Selected Poems (2011) was published by Gallery Press in Ireland and by Bloodaxe Books in Britain. Her seventh collection, The Zebra Stood in the Night, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2014 and shortlisted for the Irish Times–Poetry Now Award. Her eighth collection, Where Now Begins, is due from Bloodaxe in 2020. Her first novel, Hannie Bennet’s Winter Marriage appeared in 2000; her second, The Bird Woman was published in 2006. Kerry Hardie is a member of Aosdána.

Table of Contents

It's a small tree, 11

Letters from the Dead 12

Now 13

Inishmaan 14

How She Disposes of Fear 15

Inhabitants 16

Into Light 17

Last Swim 18

Too Late for Sorry Now 19

Talking to My Stepson 20

Shasta Daisies 21

Voyeur 22

Losing It 23

Piseog 24

Taking the Weight 25

He talks to me about field trials 26

Time Passing 27

Real Estate 28

Day Lilies 29

Poem in a Circle 30

July Drought 32

Hymn 33

Rhyme for a Rhino 34

Blasted 35

The Inadequacy of Letters of Condolence 36

Mondrian Dream, Somewhere in Russia 37

On Reading Michael Longley's Snow Water 38

Bolt the Shutter 39

Shopping 40

American Pastoral 41

April 42

Civil War Aftermath 43

'Peace is the root of all wars' 44

Derry 45

Permission 46

Tide-turn on the Brittany Coast 48

The Stone at the Heart of a Pear 49

There's More Than One of Us in Here 50

Depression 53

Escapology 54

On Revisiting Gallarus Oratory 55

…what I call god 56

Sky Station, Skellig Michael 57

Crow-light 58

All Saints 59

All Soul's Day, November the 2nd 60

Winter Solstice 61

Salt, Flame 62

Bird Talk 63

'and all shall be well' 64

Eel-Speak 65

The Emigrant's Letter 67

Coats 68

Notes 70

Editorial Reviews

Hardie’s skills as a lyric poet are second to none, and the meeting of that ability with the need to break new ground is productive of exceptional writing, reminiscent but by no means derivative of Elizabeth Bishop, in its combination of attention to detail and startling, subtly-worked-towards insight.' - Miriam Gamble , Poetry Ireland [on The Zebra Stood in the Night]

From the Publisher