The Escape Artist

by Padraig Rooney

Rooney. Padraig. The Escape Artist. First Edition. Huddersfield, Smith/Doorstop Books, 2006. Octavo. 56 pages. Original Softcover. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Padraig Rooney (born 1956) is an Irish poet, short-story writer and novelist who was born in Monaghan, Ireland. Rooney was born in Monaghan, Ireland and studied at Maynooth College and at the Sorbonne. He has travelled extensively all his life, living in Paris, Bangkok, Yokohama, Rome, Budapest and, latterly, in Switzerland. He was the recipient of two Irish Arts Council bursaries. He has taught abroad for many years and currently resides in Switzerland as an IB English teacher. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1986, the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition in 2005 and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in 2009. (Wikipedia).

60 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2006

About the author

Padraig Rooney (born 1956) is an Irish poet, short-story writer and novelist who was born in Monaghan, Ireland.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann]

"The Irish poet Austin Clarke compared writing poetry to being loaded with chains, just like Houdini, and attempting to free oneself from them. A group of the poems in this collection deals with Houdini and his imagined alter ego de Kolta, both escapologists, and the them of escape reverberates throughout the collection as a whole.

"'I wanted to solve the problem of the poet who does not have a natural constituency, rooted in the local and the national, such as Seamus Heaney began with. My aim was to draw together different strands of my experience without falling into the trap of the exotic, of mere local colour.'

"Anthony Burgess said of Rooney: 'It is in order for an aging writer, in a valediction to Irish readers, to essay a prophecy about Irish letters. Mr. Rooney will, I think be a credit to them.'"

From the back cover of the poems (as Goodreads has nothing at all about them).

I loved this collection of poems. I thought they were beautiful and in some cases moving. I am not going to say anything else because I came to an understanding of why I have never developed the skill/habit of reading poems and it came while watching a popular Sky Arts TV programme on Coleridge and Wordsworth. I hate listening to people enthusing about poets/poetry. It goes back to schooldays, poetry and poets attracted way more bullshit than I could tolerate. So I am not going to add to it. My enjoyment of Rooney's poems is entirely personal. I will not defend or justify it. I will happily defend Rooney's one novel 'Oasis' which I also loved. But I am confident of why I love/enjoy/appreciate a work of prose.

If you don't read poetry but thought you might try to read some at a some time in the future then consider the ti me as now and read some of Rooney's.