Book description
The poems in A Smell of Fish connect and radiate like the
spokes of a wheel: haiku, sestinas, poems beginning with a line by
somebody else or sparked off by foreign travel, a version of Dante, a
sea sequence set on the Suffolk coast, and - long overdue - Matthew
Sweeney's own version of the old Irish poem where his namesake is
turned into a bird.
In this, his seventh collection, we are back in a world where all
explanations are withheld. 'If Beckett and Kafka come to mind', as
Sean O'Brien wrote in his essay on Sweeney in The Deregulated
Muse, 'they are not simply influences but kindred imaginations'.
So we encounter a valley mysteriously filling with the smell of fish,
second-world-war planes reappearing over London, a secret attic mural
of a naked ex-lover, a cosmonaut abandoned on the moon, and a
subterranean tunnel that runs the length of Ireland.
Whatever the subject, we are in the confident hands of one of the
most imaginatively gifted poets now writing.
Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal. Apart from his poetry, he has
written children's fiction and edited three anthologies,
Beyond Bedlam
(with Ken Smith),
Emergency Kit
(with Jo Shapcott) and the
New Faber Book of Children's Verse
. Cape published his
Selected Poems
in 2002, and
Sanctuary
in 2004.
