JIM CONWELL

IMMIGRANT JOURNEY by Jim Conwell
Published 1st October 2024
Launched at the London Irish Centre on Friday 11th October 2024 

'This is a powerful collection. Reading it is like being punched in the gut. Its honesty will leave you reeling.'
— Neil Leadbeater

https://inkpantry.com/category/books-from-the-pantry/
Read Neil Leadbeater's review of Immigrant Journey in Poetry Pantry.

Martina Evans comments on Immigrant Journey:
“Thought-provoking and unsettling, Jim Conwell’s poems raise haunting questions. The child of mid-century Irish migrants, Conwell tracks the fallout from that difficult migration with an unsparing honesty in poems which are striking, poignant, sometimes wryly funny.” 

Jim Conwell was born in London to parents who had emigrated from remote farming communities in Mayo in the West of Ireland and had brought their cultural inheritance with them. Already as a child, Jim was aware of being troubled with questions of identity and meaning and in this collection he explores the tensions that arise from the possibilities and expectations of the new culture and the demands for conservation of and obedience to the old. The themes explored here are applicable to many people today and concern the difficulties for children of immigrants from conservative, patriarchal cultures.
Jim Conwell’s poetry is sharp, distilled, ironic and sometimes bitter, but also at times humorous. He has an eye for the absurd and an ear for the telling phrase. His poems are short, with not a word wasted. They are accompanied and supported by a chapter of prose memoir, which elaborates on the context of his ‘Immigrant Journey’. This book is an introduction to an original, fresh poetic voice.

Immigrant Journey by Jim Conwell
​ ISBN: 978-1-917101-07-3
148 x 210mm, 66 pages
Published 1st October 2024
RRP £10.99