All Souls

by Michael Coady

Michael Coady's rich compendium incorporates poetry, story, illustration and memoir to reflect the interlocking and overlapping territories of people and place, time and memory. This moving work involves colloquial voices and utterance from the Irish tradition and affirms an inheritance which includes emigration and pilgrimage to the United States. All Souls centres on the long title poem, an afterhours stumble homewards encountering the living and the dead, and 'The Use of Memory', a heartbreaking restoration of the lives of two mothers lost in childbirth and a father and son adrift on the tides of dislocation, poverty and pain. Chronicler and celebrant, Michael Coady has shaped a book of unusual integrity, inviting us to enter its world and concerns.

Genres: Poetry, Ireland

128 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Sheri Fresonke Harper]

This collection of poems, prose and photographs by Michael Coady take a historical turn, but are quite lyrical. Especially wonderful for me was the title poem, which takes an after party walk through his home town, holding the cheer, yet following past all the locals. Many poems feature people in all there many roles in life. The end of the collection features tales about the poet's family background.