Sunlight : New and Selected Poems

Formally adept and animated by an intimate, often humorous voice, the poems in Dubliner John O’Donnell’s three previous collections find their inspiration in subjects as diverse as history, art (not least religious art), a variety of sports, and family relationships. Throughout, O’Donnell’s imagination is alive and curious, "A gleam, this new idea in his head,” as he writes in ‘Volta’, his poem on Joyce’s famous Dublin cinema.

Though modest in number, the new poems included here make up a deeply moving journey through the recent loss of a parent and the hopeful emergence into light again.