The joker of his own tristesse’ is how one critic described Gerry Murphy, a poet whose distinctive, provocative, left-of-centre poems have made him one of the most popular Irish poets of his generation.
In this new collection, Murphy continues to explore – and indeed to play havoc with – his perennial subjects of political and religious influence; but, as the title suggests, the book highlights his poems of love and loss, of temporary lust and lasting desire that make his work complex and authentic as well as frequently laugh-out-loud.
Gerry Murphy was born in Cork in 1952. He has published six previous collections of poetry, including My Flirtation with International Socialism
(2010). End of Part One: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2006 to critical and popular acclaim.