Symphonic in structure and epic in scale, Slow Clocks of Decay explores universal themes through the lens of one of Ireland’s most imaginative poets.
Dealing with crises all-too familiar today – the loss of friends to suicide; the insidious nature of depression; the inevitability of ageing; and living as an atheist in a society not quite recovered from its quasi-theocratic past – the book climaxes in a bravura sequence that imagines the poet’s own final journey as a fantasia of Hitchcockian intrigue set in a Paris of the imagination.
Twenty-five years after his remarkable debut, Patrick Chapman’s work culminates in Slow Clocks of Decay, his most mature and expansive collection to date.