Pat Boran – författare

In Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets, more than 50 poets from all over the world explore the many meanings and connotations of the word ‘home’. Hailing from places as diverse as India and Italy, Poland and Pakistan, Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – as well as the US, the UK and Ireland itself – together they present an updated picture of a changing country while, at the same time, expanding the very definition of ‘writing from Ireland’.

The poems gathered here are as various and lively as we might hope for. Some contributors might be said to ‘write home’ in the traditional sense, describing and explaining what they find in the place they now live; for others ‘writing home’ is a determined, creative act of self-definition.

For all of them there is the real sense that writing is itself a kind of home-building, not least at a time when so many borders, physical and psychological, are under threat of closure across the world.

What do we love? When troubles and doubts threaten to overwhelm, what sustains or inspires us? What are the things we cannot do without?

Recent events have made many of us question a great deal about our lives. Yet somehow they have also taught us to see the world afresh, leading to new discoveries, both tiny and monumental - and often right on our very doorsteps.

Featuring new and emerging as well as more established voices, Local Wonders is a record in poetry of an extraordinary time. More importantly, it is a record of how we have learned to accommodate and adapt, a re-mapping of our complex relationship to our immediate surrounds.

In these still challenging times, above all it is an invitation to sing the praises of what is of real value to us now - not to ignore the things that haunt and worry us, but to see beyond them to the better world that poetry brings into the light.

Hedge School is Irish poet Pat Boran's 8th collection of poems, finding inspiration and consolation in the local and near-at-hand, in the examples of our neighbours (human and creaturely), in the roots and shoots of what turns out to be a vibrant global network. Against a backdrop of climate concern and increasing international unrest, Hedge School responds to the subjects of home and homelessness, belonging and welcome, knowledge and discovery, putting its faith in connection and communication, and trusting in small but robust forms to stand against the chill winds of our troubled and troubling times.

"A writer of great tenderness and lyricism" - Agenda, UK

"... local and international, personal and scientific, full of wisdom and wry humor ..." - Irish Literary Supplement, USA