If readers need a reminder of what language can do, how it can be rescued from the spin-doctors and made new and enthralling, they need look no further than this superb collection. Joseph O’Connor, The Sunday Tribune, Books of the Year, 25 December 2005. In whatever mood, the writer’s gaze is clear-eyed, observant, unflinching in [...]
Ros Cowman on Philip Casey’s new poetry collection, The Year of the Knife THE HIDDEN WEDDING OF THINGS THIS collection of a decade of Philip Casey’s previous poems includes work chosen from two previous collections: eight poems from Those Distant Summers (1980), and fourteen from After Thunder (1985). The third part of the collection, The [...]
This proportioning of the book reflects a growth in Casey’s work, a development of themes which, in the early work, are not yet explored. Much of this growth takes place through the increasing power of language, and Casey writes in a language which is supple, accurate, sensitive and immensely strong, and which stretches to develop [...]