Matthew Sweeney

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Biographical note:  Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal, Ireland in 1952. He moved to London in 1973 and studied at the Polytechnic of North London and the University of Freiburg. His poetry collections include A Dream of Maps (1981), A Round House (1983), Blue Shoes (1989), Cacti (1992), The Bridal Suite (1997), A Smell of Fish (2000), Selected Poems (2002), Sanctuary (2004). His most recent book is Black Moon (2004). He won a Cholmondeley Award in 1987 and an Arts Council Writers’ Award in 1999. He has also published poetry for children, collections including The Flying Spring Onion (1992), Fatso in the Red Suit (1995) and Up on the Roof: New and Selected Poems (2001). His novels for children include The Snow Vulture (1992) and Fox (2002).

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714841
ISBN:  9781844714841
Author:  Matthew Sweeney
Title:  The Night Post
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Sep-10
Extent:  144pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  15 mm
Weight:  216 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Sweeney's lyric power has grown from strength to strength since his emergence in the 80s. In this generous new selected poems, chosen by the poet himself, we see a wilder, more disparate and disruptive poet capable of tremendous poignancy, elegance and musicality.

Main description:  Part of the highly-accomplished second generation of postwar Irish writers that has gone on to achieve international prominence, Sweeney has come to signify a very different Irish sensibility, looking east towards Germany and central Europe for his models and unifying these with a passion for surreal narrative and jet black humour. Often driven by sinister, filmic scenarios and a powerful visual imagination, Sweeney's lyric power grows from strength to strength. In this new selection, featuring a number of hitherto uncollected poems, including some very early work, we see a wilder, more disparate and disruptive poet capable of tremendous poignancy, elegance and musicality.

Table of contents:
The Moonpoems:
Fog
Winter
Nightlights
Nightshow
Nightfall
Shadows
Siege
Visit
Freedom
Drought
Nightlong
Holland Park Walk
Deluge
‘I’m Dreaming of a White Xmas’
‘Was hast du mit Mond getan?’
Zzzz
Ball
Garden
Dreams
No Welcome
Astronomy
The Statue
Dracula’s Cathedral
The Birds
The Dentist
A Round House
Holiday
Blondbeard
The Monks
Home
The Return
A Goodbye to Germany, August 1978
Neighbourly Sounds
Rain
Bad Blood
The Window
New Town
Lili Marlene
A Fable
The Lake
Gifts
New Year Party
The Servant
Electric Nights
The Dancehall
The Ideal Home
The Hole
A Crow’s Cremation
Mr Lu, the Guitarist
The Obituarist
The Infirmary
Variation on a Dream
Wild Garlic
The Lame Waltzer
The Aerial
Heirs
Split-Level
Sarsaparilla
The Night Post
The Shark
Geometry
The Mugging
The Pitch
A Holborn Lamppost
In the White City
Divers at the Laurentic
The Cold
The Sea at Pollan
Dog on a Chain
The Border
Digesting Crab Claws
The Crab Rock
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Son
Calais
Boy with a Rod
Hitchhiking
Leaving the Surface
Dredging the Lake
The Statues
The Haunt of the Night-Owl
Omelettes
No Answer
How Witches Went Invisible
The Queue
Her Song
The Coffin Shop
A Diary of Symptoms
The Stone Ship
Torchlight
Singing
The Hill
The Knowing Birds
Whatever
Breaches
Blue Eggs
Bears
The Dark
Banknotes
Fishbones Dreaming
Johnjoe’s Snowman
Night Boy
Mule
The Unlit Suburbs:
The Submerged Bar
Rat Town
The Ghost Choir
The Long-Legged Chair
Sleep with a Suitcase
Riding into Town
Grandpa’s Bed
Writing to a Dead Man
Meat
Chinese Opera
Our Ikky
The Mules
Donkey Hoof
Dancer
The Dog
Postcards
Skylight
Keep Him In
The Attic
The Houseboat
Weddings and Funerals
A Day in Calcutta
The Horses
My Daughter and Ray Davies
Five Fighters
Hooves
The Sleeping Sailor

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Excerpt from book:  

Nightlights

No cloud in sight. Wind
pants the wintry arms of trees aside,
lets moon be seen.
                 She is fat tonight,
an x-ray of a bloated skull
pinned on the huge breast of night.
A ghostly glow escapes her,
                             stretching.

I feel I'm being watched. Houses
offer temporary cover, then betray me again
to her cold deathglare.
Her sodium sentries line the street,
give their glow as reinforcement. That
is about as bright, as horrible
as a sick sun.
          
                      I get a strong stench
of being stared at.
                             I hurry.

Muffled lights of passing houses
encourage me by their indifference. They
will not be bullied into unsought alliance.

                             I turn the corner home.
The shopwindow holds moon's reflection,
shocks me with dirty tactics.
                                 Then as my roomlight
beacons across the street, a car
swings round the bend. Its headlights
transfix.

Previous review quote:  Ambitious and troubling, linking Ireland to the Black Sea and madness to history, grim as death and very funny, Black Moon insists that the worst is yet to come, which may in turn bring out the best in Sweeney.

Sean O’Brien

Previous review quote:  If one had to draw the co-ordinates for Matthew Sweeney they might intersect about the point where Flann O’Brien met Marin Sorescu, though without the latter’s more intimate knowledge of bloodiness and tyranny. And there might be the ghost of a flute or pennywhistle there too, because it is impossible to read his poetry without hearing its apparently simple but sophisticated cadences as music.

George Szirtes