The Buried Breath
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.
$15.00
Paying tribute to emblematic figures of world literature, including Miklós Radnóti, murdered in 1944 after the fascist take-over of Hungary, and Otto René Castillo, brutally killed by Guatemalan government forces in 1967, the collection also responds to questions of violence, persecution, and moral commitment in the present day – in resonant pieces such as “Death of a Refugee” and “Postcards from Palestine”. And yet, these poems remain as alive to the possibilities of redemption and praise they intuit – “flung to the world / in a veer of blue” – as to the realities of suffering they behold.
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“A poet who approaches both the ancient and modern with the same insight and sensitivity, O’Rourke surely has a long and distinguished career ahead of him.”
Jessica Traynor, poet and critic
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On “Death of a Refugee” in The Buried Breath: “Shocking, visceral, rhythmic, righteous, unforgettable – dark music our age needs to hear.”
Dave Lordan, poet
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About The Author
Ciarán O’Rourke was born in 1991 and took a degree in English and History at Trinity College, Dublin. He received a Masters in English and American Studies from Oxford in 2014, as well as a doctorate on William Carlos Williams at his alma mater in Dublin in 2019. His first published collection, The Buried Breath, was published by The Irish Pages Press in 2018 and highly commended by the Forward Foundation for Poetry the following year. He currently lives in Dublin.
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| Weight | 302 g |
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| Dimensions | 225 × 147 × 19 mm |