Listen to Michael D. Higgins introducing and reading several of the poems published in this wonderful collection! (Listen to the ten featured or scroll down for a playlist of twenty-five!) Because sometimes poetry can't simply be read, it must be listened to:www.myspace.com/newandselectedpoems
This collection of poetry honours Michael D's life and loves as well as the lessons he has learned. Introductory passages offer a unique insight into the experiences that shape a poet's work, with a foreword from Abbot Mark Patrick Hederman OSB also featured. New and Selected Poems is more than an ordinary poetry collection. With an introductory prose piece before each five sections, Michael D invites the reader into the mind of a poet and brings each poem to life by revealing some of the events that inspired and influenced. Tracing his life from his "Early Days" when he (aged five) and his brother were sent to live with an aunt and uncle, through to his migration to Galway in "Of Rural Realities", these wonderful stories shape his poems. Michael D's life is laid out - raw and honest: the changes in his family life from childhood; his entry into politics, public life, and world affairs; and the appreciation, importance, enjoyment, and loss of friendship. These are his own reflections on a rich and varied life as he casts a wry but compassionate eye on human weakness and resilience, and the centrality of love for all human relationships.
New and Selected Poems is a treasury of the very best of his writing over the years and is sure to enthrall younger readers as well as his established followers. Featuring acclaimed poems such as 'The betrayal' from The Betrayal, 'Brothers' from Season of Fire, and An Arid Season's 'Ass', New and Selected Poems also reveals among other new poems, Michael D's latest including 'Of Possibility', 'The Truth of Poetry', and 'The Poisoning'.
Product Reviews
Jerome Reilly, Sunday Independent
March 1, 2012, 11:58 am
'A stark and deeply poignant reflection.'
Declan Kiberd
March 1, 2012, 11:58 am
'[In this collection, Michael D] has unerringly recreated the lost world of his childhood...What impresses most in the collection is...a noble, candid eloquence; an imaginative audacity; a sharp intellectual analysis; a depth of feeling; and most of all a sense of the dignity of everyday life - that ordinary people can, and still do, do extrodinary things'.'
The Irish Times
March 1, 2012, 11:57 am
'...the refreshing sound of a genuine speaking voice...'
Paul Perry, The Irish Times
March 1, 2012, 11:56 am
'The rhetoric is similar to Higgins’s own aspirational manifestoes and lyrics. His poetry certainly shares his political zeal and humanitarian scope...Even with such a civic-minded poetics, there is a deeply personal thread throughout, so much so that there is the feel of memoir about the collection...this is not another misery memoir and the reminiscences at times are accompanied by a more sermonising note. They also invoke other poets such as Austin Clarke, Paul Durcan, Patrick Kavanagh and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. There is also warmth and humour here.'
