Semibreve

The poems in this new collection from John F. Deane combine a lyrical grace with a fiercely questing intelligence, pushing against the mysteries of faith in a fractured world, paying tribute to the value of human life and love. Woven throughout the book is a thread of elegy for the poet’s brother, who died of cancer in 2010. The collection concludes with a sequence describing a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Throughout, Deane gives poetic voice to the paradox of human existence as simultaneously “blessed and broken.”

John F. Deane founded Poetry Ireland—the National Poetry Society—and the Poetry Ireland Review. He is also the founder of the Dedalus Press, of which he was editor from 1985 until 2006. His poetry has been short-listed for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2007 he was made Chevalier en l’ordre des arts et des lettres by the French government.