Notions

by John Kelly

Constantly inventive and unerringly precise, the poems in John Kelly’s debut collection reveal an author at home with both the stand-alone lyric and the longer, apparently improvisational pieces that contribute so much to this book’s extraordinary brio and style. The breadth of cultural reference is perhaps a given, but Kelly’s real achievement is to make sense of a sometimes teeming eld of vision. From the natural world to the troubled north of his youth, through encounters with art – and its creators – to poems that chart the seismic changes that come with love, fatherhood and loss, Notions is a book full of humour and play, wonder and woundedness. When you bow your head to the soloing thrush,
lit like an old friend’s soul
in the bones of a silver birch. – from ‘Winter’s Blessing’

84 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2018

About the author

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.