Description
“The passage of time is central to this new collection from Brian Kirk, which shifts from an unsentimental portrayal of Irish rural childhood to post-pandemic Dublin, with ‘kids almost grown but the house more crowded than ever’. Hare’s Breath is a paean to a world bent on self-destruction, yet with dizzying brinkmanship it manages to skirt despair. With his masterful control of language and astute insight into the human condition, Kirk is both philosopher and chronicler of our time, catching every moment like the titular hare’s breath. An unmistakable voice, always worth listening to.”
— Amanda Bell, author of Riptide (Doire Press)
Brian Kirk’s pure intentions illuminate each carefully crafted line of Hare’s Breath. This collection forms a contemporary and moving biography of old ways and geographies disowned until they disappear, as the hard edges of city life impose themselves on the boredoms and dangers of a rural childhood. Brian’s poems hint back in elegy for a writer-friend lost far too young; and for people and places left too soon. But, to quote from The Invisible House, ‘there will be time for all of us / to find the things we lost along the way, to learn the words of songs / we longed to sing but never had the heart.’ A thoughtful and unexpectedly joyous book.
— Jane Robinson, author of Island and Atoll (Salmon Poetry)
POET BIO:
Brian Kirk is an award-winning poet, short story writer and novelist from Dublin. His first poetry collection After The Fall was published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. His poem “Birthday” won the Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2018. His short fiction chapbook It’s Not Me, It’s You won the inaugural Southword Fiction Chapbook Competition and was published by Southword Editions at the Cork International Short Story Festival in September 2019. He is a recipient of a Professional Development and Agility Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland. His novel Riverrun was chosen as a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022. His poetry has been published in the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, Abridged, Skylight 47, Crannóg and many others, and has featured on The Poetry Programme, RTÉ Radio One, Words Lightly Spoken podcast and The Poetry Jukebox. He has read and hosted events at literary festivals around the country including Dublin Book Festival, Listowel Writers’ Week, Red Line Book Festival, Cork Short Story Festival, Belfast Book Festival and Bray Literary Festival. He is a member the Hibernian Writers’ Group. www.briankirkwriter.com.