Selected Poems | Peter Sirr

by Peter Sirr

Peter Sirr is one of the bright stars of contemporary Irish poetry. His Selected Poems gathers poems from Marginal Zones (1984; winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award), Talk, Talk (1987), Ways of Falling (1991), The Ledger of Fruitful Exchange (1995; winner of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry), and Bring Everything (2000). Sirr’s poetry eloquently reflects the changing realities of Dublin city, where personal, philosophical, and political concerns have formal implications, matching the geometry of the streets and architecture, as well as the shoreline of Dublin bay, which beckons the city’s inhabitants. His poems are sensually alert to the urban space around him and often brim over with luxuriant detail. Though Peter Sirr is always present to the world, sensitive to the language of the inarticulate, to the needs of love and desire, to what constitutes house and home, he is also consistently aware of what eludes us as we grasp experience, of what has no physical being.

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2004

About the author

Peter Sirr lives in Dublin. He is a prize-winning poet as well a critic, essayist and translator. For many years he was Director of the Irish Writers’ Centre and was also editor of the national poetry magazine, Poetry Ireland Review. He has published eight collection of poetry with The Gallery Press, including The Thing Is (2009), winner of The Michael Hartnett Award, and Selected Poems (2004). He is member of Aosdána.