Prophecy

Following his acclaimed Pandemonium, Thomas McCarthy’s Prophecy dwells on childhood memory, romantic love and the varieties of human attachment. Still embodying his distinctive voice and craft, in these poems McCarthy risks more prophetic moods and themes. There are poems on illness and recovery, ageing and creativity.

From the community well of his childhood home in County Waterford to the holy well and pilgrim site of St Gobnait’s in County Cork, the poet finds that the act of remembering is an act of making and understanding. ‘All this / Metaphor and trauma and formal technique / I place in my canvas travel bag’, he writes, beginning his poetic journeys into formal Irish Gardens of Remembrance, field hospitals of the Great War, the 1970s University campus of Iowa. ‘Along with Paul Muldoon,’ suggested Dennis O’Driscoll, McCarthy is ‘the most important Irish poet of his generation.’

Book Features:

• New collection from the author of the acclaimed Pandemonium (2016).
• Hailed as ‘the most important Irish poet of his generation’ by Dennis O’Driscoll.
• Patrick Kavanagh Award and O’Shaughnessy Prize-winning poet, previously shortlisted for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award.
• This collection touches on themes of childhood, history, memory, aging and creativity.
• A search for personal truth taking the reader from his childhood home in County Waterford to the holy well of St Gobnait’s in County Cork.

About the Author

Thomas McCarthy was born in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford in 1954. A poet, essayist and novelist, his collections of verse include The First Convention, The Sorrow Garden and Pandemonium. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize and the O’Shaughnessy Prize for Poetry. Pandemonium was short-listed for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Assembly of artists and writers. He worked as estate gardener for a grandson of the Duke of Leinster while he was in secondary school and college.