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Twenty One Sonnets by GABRIEL FITZMAURICE with illustrations by Brenda Fitzmaurice
| Paperback | 130 x 204 mm | 56 pages | ISBN 978-1-903392-68-3 | October 2007
This is deeply indigenous poetry, vitally in touch with a loved community and its experience. Les Murray
These sonnets make the best collection yet of Fitzmaurice’s adult poems. Declan Kiberd
[T]he best contemporary, traditional, popular poet in English. Ray Olson, Booklist
Fitzmaurice is a wonderful poet. Giles Foden, The Guardian
He has a gift for making the quotidian interesting and investing the ordinary with extraordinary significance. Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, The Celtic Pen
[Fitzmaurice] is poetry’s answer to J[ohn] B. Keane. Fred Johnston, Books Ireland
[Fitzmaurice] favours the sonnet and is able to manipulate this challenging form very effectively. Angela Topping, Orbis
[Fitzmaurice] is a master of the sonnet form. Eugene O’Connell, Southword
Gabriel Fitzmaurice was born, in 1952, in the village of Moyvane, County Kerry where he still lives. He has been teaching in the local primary school, where he is now principal teacher, since 1975. He is author of more than forty books, including collections of poetry in English and Irish as well as several collections of verse for children. He has translated extensively from the Irish and has edited a number of anthologies of poetry in English and Irish. He has published two volumes of essays and collections of songs and ballads. A cassette of his poems, The Space Between: New and Selected Poems 1984-1992, is also available. He frequently broadcasts on radio and television on education and the arts.
Sample Poem
Home
My family are dying one by one, My uncles and my aunts—just Peg now left: The ones who, returning to Moyvane, Brought England with them in the way they dressed. They’d travel home from Shannon on the bus (We’d no cars back then to make the trip), Though a lifetime “over”, they spoke the same as us, Still the same old Kerry accent rough and rich. They never lost their Kerry: they’d no need To lose themselves in England, or to pine For Ireland lost as they passed on their seed; My cousins are English, and our line Still comes home to visit: they belong, A people and a place that still are one.
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