Love’s Bonfire

Tom Paulin’s first collection since The Road to Inver in 2004, Love’s Bonfire sets poems about early life and marriage beside up-to-the minute and minutely registered perceptions of post-settlement Ireland. At the book’s centre are delicately inward versions of the contemporary Palestinian poet Walid Khazendar, which resonate with the proximity of other lives, other exiles and destinies, as of an autobiography by other means.

‘Who entered my room when I was outand moved the vase on the mantelpiece just a tad?who skewed that print – a Crusader – on the far wall?and those pages loose on my deskthey’re a shade dishevelled aren’t they?’
[from ‘Belongings’]