The Loss of Yellowhammers

Product Code: 9780995452947

Weight: 120.0g

Product Condition: New

John D. Kelly – practising architect and psychotherapist, moved to Fermanagh 10 years ago and has now also had his first collection of poetry The Loss Of Yellowhammers published (Summer Palace Press, 2020). John D. only began writing poetry after his move and joining Fermanagh Writers in Enniskillen in 2011. With a background in architect, his poetry has culminated in this ‘terrific’ first collection which has at its heart the themes of ‘time, loss and memory’ in a gamut of iterations and using, for the most part, nature and wildlife and the visceral and sensory aspects of the natural world (real and imaginary). He uses these as metaphors for describing and contemplating, relationship with the Self, with others and with ‘Other’ and to investigate the interconnectedness of things in time and space.

John D. Kelly’s debut The Loss of Yellowhammers, is a terrific collection, holding its own against the enormous power of Rita Duffy's wonderful painting on the front cover. It’s a rowing backwards to the soul through a fantasia of yellows. Good to see 'Salome's Lark' and 'Beyond little Skellig' surviving into this iteration from his prize-winning Mating on the Wing. That Listowel colllection was a powerful selection and what he’s added to them make the book as solid as a cast-iron tub.

The title poem is magnificent, but there are others, 'Before Big waves,' 'the Turnspit,' 'Six Black-headed Gulls' and 'Walking Without Snowshoes', All terrific, strong, mediated, measured and as tightly constructed as a bees' nest and as unexpected as bladderwrack in oil; nature observed, long-serving terriers celebrated, an oar snagged on a lily-pad; all noticed and noted it as if his art was visual and that is a fair achievement in lyric poetry. It makes for strong, centred, unassailable work. - Thomas McCarthy: poet