Namanlagh

by Tom Paulin

SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HEANEY PRIZE

I guess I must have been in two minds
about the new day
as the daylight gods
began to march in straight lines
going I don't know where.

from 'The Spare Room'


In his first collection for more than a decade, Tom Paulin revisits themes of place, occupation, conflict and legacy, primarily in the context of his native Northern Ireland. Stories and memories, even histories, are shown to be both frail and persistent, troubling and vital. There is a powerful austerity in play as he sets aside the rhetorical force and linguistic dazzle for which he is renowned, to speak simply of later life and the losses it 'if only some idea / could find its way / through enemy territory / then I'd at last begin / to look up at the sky.' As outward-looking as ever, he also includes here intimate and resonant versions from Brecht and Ronsard, and from the contemporary Palestinian poet, Walid Khazendar.

'To say the [Fivemiletown] was one of the best books of the Eighties isn't it is one of the best books I know, or for that matter, am capable of imagining . . . what British or Irish poet was doing anything like this?' Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books

'Tom Paulin is among the best of a great generation of Irish poets.' Sunday Telegraph

'Paulin often creates the illusion that the poem is being made up as he goes along. Spontaneity is difficult to pull off in poetry but it is a Paulin forté. The casualness is only possible because of the absolute control of form, each poem a windbreak for his words . . .
' Kate Kellaway

'[Tom Paulin's] short, punchy poems are characterised by their ability to evoke images through the smallest details, or through sudden shifts of register ... Mr Paulin's poems fight against lazy uses of language ... in Love's Bonfire Mr Paulin demonstrates the strength that comes with saying less, not unlike relying on only a spark for warmth.' The Economist

64 pages, Paperback

Expected publication May 19, 2026

About the author

Tom (Thomas Neilson) Paulin is a poet, critic and playwright. He was raised in Belfast in Northern Ireland where his father was the headmaster of a grammar school, and his mother was a doctor. He was educated at Hull University and Lincoln College, Oxford.

He lectured in English at the University of Nottingham from 1972 until 1989, and was Reader in Poetry from 1989 until 1994. He was a director of Field Day Theatre Company in Derry, Northern Ireland. He has also taught at the University of Virginia and was Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Reading. He is now G. M. Young Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford. He is a well-known broadcaster and a regular member of the panel for the BBC Television arts programme 'Newsnight Review'.

Much of his early poetry reflects the political situation in Northern Ireland and the sectarian violence which has beset the province since the late 1960s. His collections include A State of Justice (1977), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Strange Museum (1980), which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Liberty Tree (1983) and the acclaimed Fivemiletown (1987), which explores Northern Irish Protestant culture and identities. Later collections include Walking a Line (1994) and The Wind Dog (1999), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Invasion Handbook (2002) is the first instalment of an epic poem about the Second World War. His latest collection is The Road to Inver: Translations, Versions and Imitations 1975-2003 (2004), which brings together work from four decades.

His non-fiction includes Ireland and the English Crisis (1984), Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State (1992), The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style (1998), a critical study of the nineteenth-century essayist and radical, and (with Amit Chaudhuri), D. H. Lawrence and "Difference": The Poetry of the Present (2003), a study exploring Lawrence's position as a 'foreigner' in the English canon.

Tom Paulin is editor of The Faber Book of Political Verse (1986) and The Faber Book of Vernacular Poetry (1990). His plays include The Riot Act: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone, which toured Ireland in 1984, and All the Way to the Empire Room which was broadcast by the BBC in 1994. His latest book is The Secret Life of Poems (2007).

Tom Paulin lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[eris · Rating 3 out of 5]

a middling collection. some poems cut right to the bone - direct yet opaque enough to require work to get to their core - others seem to have no other role than as placeholders.

[Michaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75⭐️