Long admired for his irreverent humour as a cartoonist, in 2009 Tom Mathews proved himself to be an inimitable presence in Irish poetry with the publication of his Dedalus Press debut The Owl and the Pussycat.
His follow-up, No Return Game, takes its title from Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, and represents both a deepening and a darkening of Mathew’s artistic vision. Throughout, his passions for life and language prove guiding stars and constant companions, as he takes on the big questions of time and love, ageing and loss.
Tom Mathews was born in Dublin in 1952. Best known as one of Ireland’s most popular cartoonists, his work appears weekly in the Irish Times and Sunday Independent. His debut poetry collection, The Owl and the Pussycat, was shortlisted for the inaugural Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize in 2010.