Folk

The poems in Tony Curtis's new collection are woven out of his fascination with the everyday, the quirky, and the downright extraordinary. These are poems wrapped up in love and death, friendship and memory, madness and music – from the blind man singing in a field, to his three Cistercian uncles singing plainchant. There are people at the heart of everything he writes. Curtis is a born storyteller, and these are poems crafted by a poet with a wonderful ability to express great depth of feeling with deceptive simplicity."Curtis lives on the borderline between our world and the world of the Spirits."The Irish Times"His humour and charm, and ability to turn a poem with the seemingly simplest of images, and that understanding of how words will play over the listener's ear, are hallmarks which are pleasingly brought to the fore on the page in this hefty new collection. His greatest skill is to make readers go "yes, of course"; he reminds us of what we've known all along though perhaps not recognised, and reading his poems is therefore an uplifting experience."The Warwick ReviewTony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955. He studied Literature at Essex University and Trinity College, Dublin. An award-winning poet, Curtis has published six warmly received collections, the most recent of which was The Well in the Rain: New & Selected Poems (Arc, 2006). In 2003 he was awarded the Varuna House Exchange Fellowship to Australia. He is a member of Aosdána, and a recipient of the Irish National Poetry Prize.