Paddy Bushe Libros

The collection features the work of Paddy Bushe, a distinguished poet celebrated for his contributions in both Irish and English. This anthology compiles selections from his previous collections, showcasing his evolution and mastery of language. As noted in the introduction by Bernard O'Donoghue, the poems transcend local themes, offering a universal humanism that resonates across cultures and eras. The collection is both enlightening and engaging, affirming Bushe's status as a leading voice in contemporary Irish literature.

Commencing in Norwich Cathedral where "organ-pipes, sunstruck by the last rays / Through the high cathedral windows, beamed / Beyond sin or sanctity", the poems in Paddy Bushe's new collection explore questions of identity and self-knowledge, particularly in the light of time spent in places such as the abandoned monastic settlement of Skellig Michael, or the mountains of Nepal. The coming together of here and there, of East and West, is alluded to in the title poem, centred around a plastercast of the Buddha in the poet's garden "Rooted in all this betwixt and between!" The fourth section is made up of poems that deal with mortality, fragility, the threat of loss and "utter absence", as well as poems of joy and transcendence. The book closes with The Howl for Art Ó Laoghaire, the poet's translation of the great eighteenth-century Gaelic poem, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire.

Described by Bernard O'Donoghue as "the leading poet writing in both Irish and English", Paddy Bushe is a committed, engaged and highly accomplished writer in Ireland's two official languages. He is also a much admired translator from the Irish. In Peripheral Vision, his new collection of poems in English, he explores the relationship between seeing and vision, between the often solitary pilgrimage of the artist and the collective journey of the arts in their many expressions and forms. From the singing stone of the sculptor Imogen Stuart to the image of a piper "rooted in his chair" who nevertheless "travels deep and wide", the transformative power of vision, belief and endeavour is felt throughout, and acts as both salve and succour against the hardships of the world, what one poem calls "this long, brutal siege of the heart".

Following on from To Ring in Silence, his new and selected poems, published in 2008, Second Sight draws attention to his considerable achievement in Irish, presenting in a dual-language format the poet’s own selection from three previous books – In Ainneoin na gCloch, Gile na Gile and Móinéar an Chroí, all published by Coiscéim – accompanied by his own English language translations.

Explorations of music and landscape - indeed of the music of the landscape - lead one of Ireland's most admired bilingual poets into a spirited defence of the arts in contemporary society and a sustained celebration of the natural world. Paddy Bushe is the recipient of the Oireachtas prize for poetry and the 2006 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award.