A Smell Of Fish
$19.98
- Paperback
80 pages
- Release Date
3 March 2000
Summary
The new book from the popular Irish poet, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry.
The poems in A Smell of Fish connect and radiate like the spokes of a wheel: haiku, sestinas, poems beginning with a line by somebody else or sparked off by foreign travel, a version of Dante, a sea sequence set on the Suffolk coast, and - long overdue - Matthew Sweeney’s own version of the old Irish poem where his namesake is turned into a bird.
In this, his seventh collection, we…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780224060677 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0224060678 |
| Author: | Matthew Sweeney |
| Publisher: | Vintage Publishing |
| Imprint: | Jonathan Cape |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 80 |
| Release Date: | 3 March 2000 |
| Weight: | 122g |
| Dimensions: | 14mm x 132mm x 193mm |
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Critics Review
“He is an original…a surprising and skilled poet.” -Harvard Review
Sweeney’s poems are reflective, funny, supremely inventive and impeccably written. This is contemporary poetry at its very best – Charles Simic
Matthew Sweeney is a unique force for good in British poetry. The work is one large metaphor, a parable for the human condition… He is one of our finest poets of the unconscious; of darkness brought to life and madly, glintingly, against all expectation, shared – Ruth Padel * Independent *
The poems are rich with situation and character, embryos of narrative, pulsing with implicit life… Sweeney has full command of the devices of poetry: sound, image, rhythm adn form, and a sly sense of humour – Financial Times * Ruth Fainlight *
Darkly comic * Guardian *
Sweeney’s poems are like shards of mirror. As you bend to look more closely, they cut. His version from Dante’s Inferno , a passage which deals with the damned locked in ice on the floor of Hell, is chilling and possesses a near -demonic energy. It seems that for Sweeney, as for Douglas Dunn, a long poem releases new force in the poet * Observer *
Matthew Sweeney
Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal. Apart from his poetry, he has written children’s fiction and edited three anthologies, Beyond Bedlam (with Ken Smith), Emergency Kit (with Jo Shapcott) and the New Faber Book of Children’s Verse. Cape published his Selected Poems in 2002, and Sanctuary in 2004.
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