Description
For almost fifty years Medbh McGuckian’s poems have dazzled and beguiled discerning readers. They are neither descriptions nor reflections of experience but, rather, experiences in themselves. They are not locations of meaning, but instead sources of sustenance for the senses. New Selected Poems (1978-2022), drawing on seventeen individual collections from The Flower Master and Other Poems to The Thankless Paths to Freedom, foregrounds more explicitly feminine themes in — as Paul Muldoon has said — ‘one of our most alert and alluring poets’.
. . . a woman and a melon
are both alike; nobody knows what’s in them
until they are broke up.
— ‘The Character of the Dug Explained’
‘But in all this she is herself. There is no one like McGuckian writing in the English language, and we should be grateful for her ornate and ambiguous presence. Too often, I have been asked, ‘But what does it all mean?’ You might as well ask what Charlie Parker ‘means’. He means music. McGuckian means poetry. — Ciaran Carson, Verse