The Seasons of Cullen Church

by Bernard O'Donoghue

This elegiac collection, which was shortlisted for the 2016 TS Eliot Prize, combines nostalgic poems, several of which tell stories from O’Donoghue’s childhood in County Cork, with translations from Virgil, Dante and early English verse.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

Published July 18, 2019

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

As a rule, I’m not much for modern poetry; it tends to suggest people who can’t even find two mates to form a band with them, greetings card jokes with delusions of grandeur, green ink, or at best academics filling a few idle minutes between supervisions. But, to each category there are exceptions. And yes, O’Donoghue is a retired don, and yes, I’m Cthulhufather to one of the grandchildren to whom he dedicated this book, so being pretty much family my review can’t be considered remotely objective. But I do think he has a way with the ingenious, generally rueful image which makes his work stand out. Many of the poems here are in memory of friends, places, times lost, and you could consider the best of the book to be a sort of map of grief both for those others and for one’s own mortality (I especially liked the twist on the old saw of life as a journey, wherein as you get nearer the end it doesn’t matter so much precisely which interchanges you make). I wasn’t so keen on the translations from/riffs on Dante and the Aeneid, but then that’s more a function of me not being keen on the sources (especially the Aeneid, which has always struck me as an unnecessary and ungainly hybrid of sequel, retcon and remake, trying to wedge itself into a mythic history where no space exists for it – the Star Trek: Enterprise of the ancient world). The versions from the Anglo-Saxon riddles of the Exeter Book, on the other hand, are wonderful, even if at least one of the answers still escapes me.

[Phillip J. O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book from which I read a few poems over several evenings.

It is a very fine collection and some poems create very powerful images.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully presented poetry collection in the classic Faber style with yellow and red text on a burgundy background, the cover alone is worth the price.

Even better, the poems are clear and accessible and moving, ranging across the Irish emigrant experience, English war-time life, science and more. Some great lines and great rhymes:

But, even having so little, there was room to have less.

(The Din Beags)

...return our human cold again
so, packed in ice, we can retain whatever
it was we once must have meant by love
and the kind frost that stopped it going off.

(The Thaw)

And a disturbing poem chronicling the violence of schools in the past - And Spoil the Child - that stands up there with Paula Meehan's Literary Class, South Inner City.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

An evocative and autumnal work that derives its power from concise and controlled writing. O’Donoghue is a master craftsman.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little collection. The poems are elegantly written and very personal. I enjoyed the wit and learning in them.

[Nick Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, a bit sub-Heaney, pleasant enough, and title poem good, but, honestly...
Mind you compared to the Alice Oswald I've gone on to read, it's a work of genius and sanity