Micheal O’Siadhail knows desire, love, trust and wonder, while at the same time facing suffering, tragedy and loss. His life has always been a yearning for meaning, and these four decades of poems work both head and heart towards a ripe wisdom. They are not only richly personal – marriage, friendship, vocation, grief – but also engage with what matters in culture and society – music, language, city life and the dynamics of history. His deep roots are Irish but O’Siadhail’s scope is global. This is life lived to the full with jazz-like leaps and let-go where classical forms and variations make for playful freedom and innovation.
His Collected Poems draws on thirteen collections, and includes a CD of him reading a selection of poems.
‘He is a delightful poet – I don’t know of any other who writes with such affection of the everyday, our changing moods and chances’ – Louis Simpson.
‘A controlled sensuousness of language and it comes as near as poetry can, without being confessional, to conveying the overtones and textures of actual experience’ – Anne Stevenson.
'His love poems are as witty and accomplished as one could wish… O’Siadhail is a rare and distinctive voice’ – Richard Wilbur.
'O'Siadhail is both a poet of the world and for the world… his poetry is intricately complex yet accessible' – Richard Dilworth Rust, Irish Literary Supplement.
'The tone of O'Siadhail's voice is one of barely suppressed joy… exuberant, exploratory and incredibly entertaining' – Mary O'Donnell, Studies.
'One of our foremost poets… his work is that rare combination of the intellectual and the emotional' – Eugene O'Brien, The Irish Book Review.