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Publications by Seamus Cashman
Poetry collections
“… poems of
lasting quality which treat of a range of themes and issues …[and] the
prose-poems are particularly beautiful examples of the genre.” Poetry
Wales
Review.
“ has the
authenticity of mature experience … and a wit, ease and naturalness
to admire and enjoy.” Poetry Ireland Review.
“All of
Cashman’s poems are carefully chiselled … smoothly polished.” Irish
Catholic ‘Bookshelf’. “strong imagery … and with a smoothness of poetic
texture ..” Books Ireland
Carnival (Monarchline, 1988)
Clowns & Acrobats (Wolfhound Press, 2000)
That Morning Will Come: New
& Selected Poems (Salmon Publishing, 2007)
Salmon
Poetry launches
That
Morning Will Come
New
& selected poems by
Seamus
Cashman
Available
from the publisher, SalmonPoetry, Publishers (www.salmonpoetry.com/thatmorning.html)
or,
in case of difficulty, from the bookshop
here
Politics
and poetry have always interacted and nowhere as subtly and gently as in the
opening section of this third collection by former publisher (he founded
Wolfhound Press in 1974) and poet, Seamus Cashman who hails from east Cork and now lives in Portmarnock, Co Dublin.
Dr
Maurice Harmon, emeritus Professor of Irish Studies (UCD) speaking of the
title poem (which had its origins in an 1897 essay by Pearse but is about Palestine today) said
at the launch: “What Pearse was concerned with in his essay was the
importance of the imagination and the literary and intellectual growth of
the nation. The idea is a guiding
principle throughout Cashman’s collection. It is difficult to perceive that
sense of hope among the towns and villages of occupied Palestine where Part 1 is set; yet the
title poem came from there. And the belief in possibility underlies the
poems and defines Cashman’s philosophy. It is the raison d’etre for the
work. Essentially humanistic and positive – without ignoring negative
issues – it defines the man. It is his informing
faith.”
There are thirteen poems in this section
ranging from despair and death to the hope and possibilities. ‘Random
contact’ tell of the life of a bullet that is about to kill an innocent
young writer; ‘Checkpoint searchings’ becomes a lament on the humiliation
faced daily by workers, pregnant women and children in “lovely elegaic
lines rising above what they describe – art turning loss into beauty of
lament.” ‘Water drops’ is a song of transformation – they bring renewal and
hope – like a baptism. and in the final poem we have the title, ‘That morning
will come’ – a poem of promise in spite of oppressive circumstances: ‘there
is a gentleness in no, in words unsaid, in looks unseen. / There is the
ochre brilliance of a rising sun, and when we kiss again/ a second birth at
dawn .../ That morning will come
These poems all have in common a faith
in the imagination, in possibility, in other ways of going and coming. Part 2 Opening doors – does just that –
it opens doors into childhood and family, to, the father who is a master,
the mother who has insight; and to his own sons and daughters.
Part 3 comprises poems selected from two previous collections
which are serious meditations on place and history – recovered incidents,
childhood romance, prose poems. These include the early and “amazing” long
poem, ‘The small god’s song’ through which the poet re affirms what it is
to be; he is the voice of existence; he is an early manifestation of that
faith in the imagination and its freedom that informs
this entire collection
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