Available Light by Maria McManus. Arlen-House, 2018.

Description: 

Mining the classical and the contemporary desire for portents, Maria McManus’ poems engage with urgent quests for freedom and survival; to fly or fall away from life’s vicissitudes. Like the dawn chorus, her poems offer the reader the lull and rhythm of echoing, repeated phrases, interspersed with brief, piercing insights, as if a lone bird sang out of the forest. Insightful, suggestive and wide-ranging, this collection showcases a distinctive talent

– Katie Donovan

Maria McManus is not an ivory tower poet, not a grey heron standing alone and aloof on the river bank gazing at its own reflection. No, Maria is a poet who hears the multiple voices, the harsh, the shrill, the melodic, the voices of the lark and the crow, of passion and pain, the dawn chorus of our lives. She hears these voices, echoes them and joins in the chorus. These poems are stories, meditations, illustrations, sometimes of actual birds, but about life and death, all its hope and horror, its beauty and brutality

– Séamas Mac Annaidh

Condition: New paperback.