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Reviewers' Opinions
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Extracts from reviews are also included on individual authors' pages.
 
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Richard Hawtree reviews "Gerry Sweeney's Mammy"

26/2/2018

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This is a book of great clarity. Its poems draw strength from the twin securities of family and place before striking out boldly to engage with themes of death and loss. Dónall Dempsey’s new collection deftly shows readers how: ‘[t]he flag of self unfurls / snaps into the lost moment.’ (‘Walking from the Rising Sun to Kildare Town’). This is especially apparent in poems like ‘Follow the Leader’ where the writer’s daughter prompts this unfurling, teaching him not simply to recognise but: ‘to be / the world that she / can see / (half invention / half discovery) …’ Many of Dempsey’s poems take up this ontological challenge, asking us to consider how our being in the world is shaped by complex interaction with close relatives and friends. In short, Gerry Sweeney’s Mammy celebrates our fundamental interconnectedness, the strength of that human chain outlasting the home place or family tree. ‘Journey of a Smile’ finds just such continuity behind each smile in an old photo album:
It pays no attention
to gender

or place or place
in history.

Different people
lay claim to it.

Each generation
borrows it
[…]

This perspective ensures that the elegant poems of personal recollection, found throughout the book, work cumulatively to produce a thoroughly inclusive experience for readers.
But above all else, this is a book that revels in the mysterious power of words, in the conviction that: ‘language is lava // the mind is molten / always flowing’ (‘Hithering and Tithering Waters Of..’). And so a pyroclastic flow from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake occasionally disrupts these texts, enriching their poetic soil with a thunderword ending in ‘[…] TOOHOOHOORDENENTHURNUK!’ (‘How Not To Swear When One Is Swearing’). Indeed, thunder itself is an important unifying device in this collection, a marker of self-discovery that is frequently linked to the poet’s acknowledgment of the human. Early in the collection we read:

Oh what a thing it was
being human.

I, in due course
was an about-to-be

thunderstorm
clumping about the evening
[…]
(‘O Words are Poor Receipts for What Time Hath Stole Away’)

Later, the poem ‘In the Mythology of Foxes’ offers the same semantic pairing in counterpointing an uncle’s shooting of a fox: ‘the fearful thunder // of his gun / had ended everything’ with his nephew’s shocked response: ‘trying to comfort her / with his human tears.’ Many of the poems in Gerry Sweeney’s Mammy seek to recover this humanitas at the heart of things. It is present in the frequent intertextual allusions to Donne, Herbert, Hopkins, and Chaucer. In ‘Till Human Voices Wake Us’ even snow takes part in the search:
the human
tears in its eyes
the snow smiles

snow now
both
inside/outside
[…]

This is a book of great humanity; in ‘Hithering and Tithering Waters Of..’ the poet reads Joyce to his daughter as a bedtime story. Her response will be shared by many readers of this fine volume:
Beside the tickling waters of.
Beside the chuckling waters of.
Beside the laughing waters of.

She loves the music of it all.



This review first appeared in SOUTH 58 magazine
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  • DEMPSEY & WINDLE
  • Authors' pages A-B
    • Veronica Aaronson
    • Derek Adams
    • Timothy Adès
    • Gary Allen
    • Moira Andrew
    • David Ashbee
    • Wanda Barford
    • Ranald Barnicot
    • Kevin Bailey
    • William Bedford
    • Philip Bentall
    • David Bleiman
    • Marc Brightside
    • Trisha Broomfield
  • Authors' Pages C – G
    • Fiona Cartwright
    • Ian Caws
    • Ian Clarke
    • Mary Chuck
    • Stephen Claughton
    • Claudia Court
    • David Cooke
    • Alexandra Davis
    • Donall Dempsey
    • Ray Diamond
    • Tony Earnshaw
    • Scott Elder
    • Roger Elkin
    • Wendy Falla
    • Bert Flitcroft
    • Robbie Frazer
    • Dawn Gorman
  • Authors' Pages H - O
    • Charlotte Harker
    • Richard Hawtree
    • Georgia Hilton
    • Paul Jeffcutt
    • Margaret Jennings
    • Sue Johns
    • Peter W Keeble
    • Wendy Klein
    • Janet Loverseed
    • Jeremy Loynes
    • Valerie Lynch
    • Aiison Mace
    • Kyle McHale
    • Ayelet McKenzie
    • Heather Moulson
    • M.E.Muir
    • Ian Mullins
    • Patrick B Osada
  • Authors' Pages P – S
    • Linda Rose Parkes
    • Mark G Pennington
    • Nicky Phillips
    • Colin Pink
    • Jenna Plewes
    • Ray Pool
    • Harriet Proudfoot
    • Polly Roberts
    • Imogen Russell Williams
    • Julie Sampson
    • Carla Scarano D'Antonio
    • Richard Schwartz
    • Susan Jane Sims
    • Fiona Sinclair
    • Belinda Singleton & Kathryn Southworth
    • Kathryn Southworth
    • Kathleen Strafford
    • Paul Surman
    • Paul Sutherland
  • Authors' Pages T – Z
    • Cherrie Taylor
    • Laura Theis
    • Brad Walker
    • Sue Wallace-Shaddad
    • J S Watts
    • Poul Webb
    • John Wheeler
    • Richard Williams
    • Simon Williams
    • Geoffrey Winch
    • Lynn Woollacott
    • Richard Woolmer
    • Mantz Yorke
    • Damon Young
  • Anthologies
  • COMPETITION
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • Reviews of our books
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  • Contact Us