Tongues of Fire by Sean Hewitt

Tongues of Fire by Sean HewittA SPECTATOR AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 A remarkable first collection by an important new poet. In this collection, Sean Hewitt gives us poems of a rare musicality and grace. By turns searing and meditative, these are lyrics concerned with the matter of the world, its physicality, but also attuned to the proximity of each moment, each thing, to the spiritual. Here, there is sex, grief, and loss, but also a committed dedication to life, hope

after a casual affair

can she survive to become the author of her own story

That's where my best friends Josie

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years

and remember long after the final page

White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep

She's smart

A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating

The seven stories of Sudden Travellerimmerse us anew in one of the most distinctive literary imaginations

The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light

cleanliness is next to enlightenment

August 1974: a man is walking in the sky