CIARÁN O’ROURKE
Finely crafted and ethically charged, Ciarán O’Rourke’s third collection of poetry, Prophetstown, blends lyric power and searching sensitivity in its examination of the conflicts and contradictions of twenty-first-century civilization. O’Rourke casts an unflinching eye over the devastations of recent history, even as he celebrates the capacities and solaces of the poetic vocation itself.
CIARÁN O’ROURKE
Longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2023
With lyric grace and meditative clarity, Phantom Gang offers a daring dissection of civilizational violence in a variety of contexts – from the intimate atavisms and inequalities of Irish history to the insidious growth of the global Big Tech economy in the present day – alongside deep, sensually delicate explorations of broken love and salvaged memories.
CIARÁN O’ROURKE
The Buried Breath announces the arrival of a striking new voice and poetic talent. With formal ease and a sharply engaged sense of ethical inquiry, these lucid, lyrical poems delve into art and history, remembered lives and contemporary conflicts, for illumination and insight. Featuring vivid portrayals of love, desire, grief, and mourning, the collection is hauntingly sensitive to time’s passage, and to the sometimes fragile solaces of its craft – as its supple translations from Catullus, Virgil, and Machado, and its sensually immersive array of ekphrastic pieces attest.
