'Somewhere Far' is not a place. The poems explore the traumas of growing up too early; of encountering an adult world of loss, of addiction, of absence, of mental illness, all the while trying to make sense of a future. Permanently out of kilter, the poems reveal more than their speakers know.
54 Questions for the Man Who Sold a Shotgun to My Father is the second pamphlet by British-born Irish poet Joe Carrick-Varty. "Atmospheric, suffused with the blue light of other people's televisions, these poems, while often devastating, possess a tremendous warmth. Carrick-Varty takes an object/a loved one/a particular moment in time and carefully turns it over and over in his hands. This pamphlet is open-hearted, thoughtful -- painfully, beautifully alive to the world and its strange specifics" -- Ella Frears "Joe Carrick-Varty's poems don't need permission from anybody. Their exceptional and beautiful vulnerability is a permission all of its own. Each poem contained here demonstrates a mind completely awake to the sadnesses and risks of intimacy, and awake to finding an original vocabulary for articulating these things. A brilliant short collection. I'm utterly convinced of this poet's talent." --Wayne Holloway-Smith
Debut collection from a British-born Irish writer who was a star of Carcanet's New Poetries VIII anthology.