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Parallax: And Selected Poems
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
Only for you do the two mute girls on stage
who falter at first, erratic as static
in the synaptic gap between each image,
imperceptibly jolt to life-
grinning, tap-dancing, morphing into footage,
their arms like immaculate pistons, their legs
like knives . . .
It lasts a minute, their having-been-written
onto light.
-from "The Mutoscope"
Sinéad Morrissey is one of the most fascinating talents in international poetry. Recently appointed as Belfast's first poet laureate, she creates poems known for their combination of keen intelligence and whispered intimacy.
In Parallax, which won the 2013 T. S. Eliot Prize, Morrissey explores what is captured, and what is lost, when houses and cityscapes, servants and saboteurs ("the different people who lived in sepia"), are arrested in time by photography (or poetry), subjected to the authority of a particular perspective. Assured and disquieting, Morrisey's poems explore the paradoxes that result when we attempt to freeze our passing experience through art.
This edition of Parallax also includes Morrissey's own selection of her favorite poems from her previous collections, published for the first time in the United States. In their variety of subjects and styles they trace the evolution of a poet, showcasing the formal mastery and tenderness that define her work.
Only for you do the two mute girls on stage
who falter at first, erratic as static
in the synaptic gap between each image,
imperceptibly jolt to life-
grinning, tap-dancing, morphing into footage,
their arms like immaculate pistons, their legs
like knives . . .
It lasts a minute, their having-been-written
onto light.
-from "The Mutoscope"
Sinéad Morrissey is one of the most fascinating talents in international poetry. Recently appointed as Belfast's first poet laureate, she creates poems known for their combination of keen intelligence and whispered intimacy.
In Parallax, which won the 2013 T. S. Eliot Prize, Morrissey explores what is captured, and what is lost, when houses and cityscapes, servants and saboteurs ("the different people who lived in sepia"), are arrested in time by photography (or poetry), subjected to the authority of a particular perspective. Assured and disquieting, Morrisey's poems explore the paradoxes that result when we attempt to freeze our passing experience through art.
This edition of Parallax also includes Morrissey's own selection of her favorite poems from her previous collections, published for the first time in the United States. In their variety of subjects and styles they trace the evolution of a poet, showcasing the formal mastery and tenderness that define her work.
- GenresPoetry
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2015
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187 people want to read
About the author
Sinéad Morrissey
17 books17 followersRaised in Belfast, she was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where she took BA and PhD degrees, and won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1990. She has published four collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2001), The State of the Prisons (2005), and Through the Square Window (2009), the second, third and fourth of which were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. After periods living in Japan and New Zealand she now lives in Belfast, where she has been writer-in-residence at Queen's University, Belfast and currently lectures.
Her collection, The State of the Prisons, was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award in 2006. In November 2007, she received a Lannan Foundation Fellowship for "distinctive literary merit and for demonstrating potential for continued outstanding work". Her poem "Through the Square Window" won first prize in the 2007 British National Poetry Competition. Her collection, Through the Square Window, won the Poetry Now Award for 2010.
Her collection, The State of the Prisons, was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award in 2006. In November 2007, she received a Lannan Foundation Fellowship for "distinctive literary merit and for demonstrating potential for continued outstanding work". Her poem "Through the Square Window" won first prize in the 2007 British National Poetry Competition. Her collection, Through the Square Window, won the Poetry Now Award for 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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March 11, 2016This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the January/February 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
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May 25, 2016
Absolutely stunning.
February 18, 2020
Through the Square Window
In my dream the dead have arrived
to wash the windows of my house.
There are no blinds to shut them out with.
the clouds above the Lough are stacked
like the clouds are stacked above Delft.
They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder
if it’s my son they’re after, his
effortless breath, his ribbon of years-
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,
inured, it would seem, quite naturally
to the sluicing and battering and parting back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior
One blue boy holds a rag in his teeth
between panes like a conjuror.
And then, as suddenly as they came, they go.
And there is a horizon
from which only the clouds stare in,
the massed canopies of Hazelbank,
the severed tip of the Strangford Peninsula,
and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork
in my mouth, stopper-bottled, in fact,
like a herbalist’s cure for dropsy.
In my dream the dead have arrived
to wash the windows of my house.
There are no blinds to shut them out with.
the clouds above the Lough are stacked
like the clouds are stacked above Delft.
They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder
if it’s my son they’re after, his
effortless breath, his ribbon of years-
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,
inured, it would seem, quite naturally
to the sluicing and battering and parting back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior
One blue boy holds a rag in his teeth
between panes like a conjuror.
And then, as suddenly as they came, they go.
And there is a horizon
from which only the clouds stare in,
the massed canopies of Hazelbank,
the severed tip of the Strangford Peninsula,
and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork
in my mouth, stopper-bottled, in fact,
like a herbalist’s cure for dropsy.
April 28, 2018
I quite liked many of the poems contained in this collection -- Morrissey can be very lyrical without being overly romantic or oblique. I did feel that the strength of the writing tended to decline in the excerpts from more recent volumes, though it's hard to say exactly why. Overall enjoyable, regardless.
August 25, 2018
Lyrics of the mundane that bring beauty and mobility to the daily mind. Morrissey is a gracious heir to Eavan Boland's mixture of talents.
July 20, 2019
Some of the best opening lines i've ever read, and lines found within I think will be going into some of the first centos I will dare to write. Striking!
December 18, 2024
'he becomes half man, half vine, asphyxiating. The word itself has a click in it. It halts before the ending'
afhgh what- like insanely clever
afhgh what- like insanely clever
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews