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Lantern
Wild and deep as the forests they explore, Sean Hewitt's poems go to the woods to understand, to follow the searching root of snowberry, hazels, thistles, bracken to the source. The trees hum with information, with messages and myths to be read and the willow with its head laid down /on the water is whispering something and a poet can stand in the winter woods and ask to know What is the sound of winter . . . and where does it go?
Here there is to the wych-elm and to the darkness, and to the secret language of oak. These are queer spaces, these consecrated places of communion and sex, secluded and dripping with rain, of the men who meet each other outside in the dark chamber of the wood , who find their urgent way through the undergrowth like deer plummeting through the wet branches . As well as love, Lantern deals in loss, opening with the assertion that woods are forms of grief / grown from the earth. This is a jewel-bright and quietly euphoric debut, as thrilling in its physicality as it is dextrous in its imagination, and, despite the thorns of love and pain, unafraid to dive into the wilderness.
Here there is to the wych-elm and to the darkness, and to the secret language of oak. These are queer spaces, these consecrated places of communion and sex, secluded and dripping with rain, of the men who meet each other outside in the dark chamber of the wood , who find their urgent way through the undergrowth like deer plummeting through the wet branches . As well as love, Lantern deals in loss, opening with the assertion that woods are forms of grief / grown from the earth. This is a jewel-bright and quietly euphoric debut, as thrilling in its physicality as it is dextrous in its imagination, and, despite the thorns of love and pain, unafraid to dive into the wilderness.
36 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2019
177 people want to read
About the author
Seán Hewitt
23 books376 followersSeán Hewitt's debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (2020), won the Laurel Prize in 2021. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide (2022), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. He lives in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 3, 2022
. . . and I wonder if I have ruined/ these places for myself, if I have brought/ each secret to them and weighed the trees// with things I can no longer bear.
["Dryad"]
. . . and what is a parent to a child but a god// who we turn to when we still believe/ that everything is fixable, a god/ who we weep to as we grow/ into the world, as we age into it// and each abstraction comes closer.
["Kyrie"]
The cold air would hold me, beating,/ in its tourniquet
["Härskogen"]
I love how these poems turn to the natural world as a place invested both with loss and renewal, sinking and lifting again and again.
["Dryad"]
. . . and what is a parent to a child but a god// who we turn to when we still believe/ that everything is fixable, a god/ who we weep to as we grow/ into the world, as we age into it// and each abstraction comes closer.
["Kyrie"]
The cold air would hold me, beating,/ in its tourniquet
["Härskogen"]
I love how these poems turn to the natural world as a place invested both with loss and renewal, sinking and lifting again and again.
November 21, 2019
[rating = A]
One of my: Best Books of the Year (for 2019)
Absolutely lovely little pamphlet about nature and the author's connections to it. Very much like Gluck's The Wild Iris or Mary Oliver's Blue Iris, the focus is in leaves and voices made by Nature, but also made between humans and Nature. Not only are the lines focused and concise, they are beautiful and caring with substance to them that weighs on the mind of the reader. I thought I read some homosexuality and perhaps some AIDS amongst the foliage of green and yellowing/browning, but I am not sure (though going into the forest with another man and getting on one's knees is rather obvious). Just finishing Danez Smith's "Don't Call Us Dead" and currently reading Charles Wright's "Caribou", I "Lanterns" seems to be right in the middle of both (combining nature and queerness and introspection). Really so tender and thoughtful, I look forward to getting his next work of poetry.
One of my: Best Books of the Year (for 2019)
Absolutely lovely little pamphlet about nature and the author's connections to it. Very much like Gluck's The Wild Iris or Mary Oliver's Blue Iris, the focus is in leaves and voices made by Nature, but also made between humans and Nature. Not only are the lines focused and concise, they are beautiful and caring with substance to them that weighs on the mind of the reader. I thought I read some homosexuality and perhaps some AIDS amongst the foliage of green and yellowing/browning, but I am not sure (though going into the forest with another man and getting on one's knees is rather obvious). Just finishing Danez Smith's "Don't Call Us Dead" and currently reading Charles Wright's "Caribou", I "Lanterns" seems to be right in the middle of both (combining nature and queerness and introspection). Really so tender and thoughtful, I look forward to getting his next work of poetry.
April 13, 2019
I heard about this on Robin and Josie's Book Shambles and picked it up in Foyles where I'd gone to get a present for my mystery booktube bookswap partner and while I was at it, I grabbed a second copy to bung in with the Portuguese book I'd got her on the off-chance that she's a fan of english poetry (well, you never know...)
It's a really beautiful little book of nature poems and I kept reading right to the end despite already being late to bed but there are a couple that go off on slightly er... more... er... adult themes, shall we say. Well, it's already on its way so I hope she's not easily offended...
It's a really beautiful little book of nature poems and I kept reading right to the end despite already being late to bed but there are a couple that go off on slightly er... more... er... adult themes, shall we say. Well, it's already on its way so I hope she's not easily offended...
January 27, 2025
“The world is dark / but the wood is full of stars.” Seán Hewitt’s pamphlet Lantern is a gorgeous and sensual earthy book of poems, each poem evoking dark woods and water running through them, endless trees and sharp rocks, and above all the people passing through, the voices and the bodies. Can’t wait for his full-length collection! (2025 edit: A fangirl is born.)
February 19, 2025
Very regular and botanical poems, measured and very pretty. Some lines are really memorable (the ending of "Wild Garlic" is a clear winner). A few of this were then included in his collection Tongues of Fire.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews