Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Michael Hartnett Annual Poetry Award 2009
James Harpur’s fourth collection includes intimate responses to love, birth and death, and explores faith and vision in searching and unsentimental terms. His powerful poetry gives a new perspective on the travels and travails of early Irish saints and on the Syrian pillar hermit St Symeon Stylites. In these and other poems – about the Book of Kells, a monk and his star-timetable’, and translations from Boethius – Harpur’s lyric gift finds moments of illumination and grace in the ordinary as well as the miraculous.
James Harpur has published three previous books of poetry and a translation of Boethius’s poems entitled Fortune’s Prisoner. Awards for his poetry include the 1995 British National Poetry prize, and bursaries from Cork Arts, the Arts Council, the Eric Gregory Trust and the Society of Authors. His non-fiction books include Love Burning in the Soul, an introduction to Christian mystics. He has held residencies at the Munster Literature Centre, Cork, and Exeter Cathedral. He lives in Co. Cork.
Synopsis
James Harpur's poetry explores faith and vision in searching and unsentimental terms. His powerful collection, inspired by a vivid historical imagination, focuses on the Dark Ages of Europe and the struggles of early Christianity, especially in the title sequence, which concentrates on early Irish saints.
James Harpurwas born in 1956 of Anglo-Irish parentage. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and has worked as an English teacher, lexicographer, and editor. He now lives in Ireland. He is author of Love Burning in the Soul: The Story of the Christian Mystics, from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton(Shambhala, 2005).
Synopsis
A new perspective on early Irish history with the travels and travails of saints.
About the Author
James Harpur was born in 1956 of Anglo-Irish parentage. He read Classics and then English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is now a freelance writer living in Ireland, with three previous collections of poetry from Anvil. Author of "Love Burning in the Soul: The Story of the Christian Mystics, from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton" (Shambhala, 2005).