This is a book about the irreducible core of what it is to be human in a world that changes constantly yet repeats and repeats. It uses archetypal images to speak to a place in us that's not tied to fashion. It is mostly specific to a particular Irish landscape, with an awareness that fear is our constant companion, but also joy.
Kerry Hardie's new 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, the quiet accumulation of the slowly learned lessons of a lived life. There are narratives of the wondrous bewilderments of life as well as homages to the dead and the dying.
Kerry Hardie is one of Ireland's leading poets. This is the first edition to make her work widely available in Britain.
Hannie Bennet's route through life is marriage. As her fifth husband, she picks Ned Renvyle - explorer, writer, and gentlemen farmer. But his house is in Ireland, and the life is very different from anything she has ever experienced.