This is a book of wonderings and wanderings. Many of the wanderings are on familiar territory explored on foot, the hills of Wicklow and of the Burren in Co. Clare, the shorelines of Dublin Bay, of North West Donegal, of Galway, Achill and the Aran Islands. In these poems there is an alertness to the palimpsest of lives, human and non-human, lived in these places and the mystery of each individual life. The poem, "Bunting's Honey' is a tribute not only to those who composed and played early Irish harp music but also to those who collected the music and who, long after their own deaths, made possible a most remarkable renaissance of that same musical tradition. There are other wonderings, not least the horrors of the wars of the twenty-first century, and the need to find a way to somehow set aside fear and difference and to give peace and tenderness a chance.
The Poetry Book Society has selected Bunting's Honey as the Book of the Week, and is available on our website with 25% off for PBS members!