Wow! eBook
Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill: New and Selected Poems
Author(s): John F. Deane (Author)
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication Date: 25 Oct. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 176 pages
- ISBN-10: 1847771173
- ISBN-13: 9781847771179
Book Description
John F. Deane is a vital and generous presence in Irish poetry. “New and Selected Poems” gathers work from Deane’s five previous “Carcanet” collections, alongside a new sequence, “Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill”. Written with an inquiring intelligence, these poems of a dozen years meditate on the relevance of Christian spirituality to our troubled times. Each of the twelve poems in the title sequence presents a movement of the spirit, from the author’s childhood in the west of Ireland, through the death of a wife, to the birth of a grandchild. Arranged in the manner of an orchestral symphony, each section takes its cue from a different piece of music, from Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” to Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum”. The sequence traces, phase by phase, the development of a Christian life. Faith, in its broadest sense, is inflected by imagination.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“No poet writing today takes this spiritual task so seriously: nor achieves it with such exemplary, luminous grace.” —Irish Times
About the Author
John F. Deane was born on Achill Island in 1943. He founded Poetry Ireland – the National Poetry Society – and The Poetry Ireland Review in 1979. He is the author of many collections of poetry and some fiction. His poetry has been published in French, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian and Swedish translations. John F. Deane s prose works include two novels, In the Name of the Wolf (Blackstaff Press, 1999), published in German translation in 2001, Undertow (Blackstaff Press, 2002), and two collections of short stories, The Coffin Master (2000) and The Heather Fields (2005), both from Blackstaff Press. In 1996 Deane was elected Secretary-General of the European Academy of Poetry. The recipient of the O Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry in 1998, and the Grand International Prize for Poetry from Romania in 2000, John F. Deane was given the prestigious Marten Toonder Award for Literature in 2001. His poems in Italian, translated by Roberto Cogo, won the 2002 Premio Internazionale di Poesia Città di Marineo for the best foreign poetry of the year. John F. Deane is a member of Aosdána.
