Fiction - Hardcover

O'Callaghan, Conor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 185235383X ISBN 13: 9781852353834

Publisher: The Gallery Press, 2005

Synopsis

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION ‘O’Callaghan’s poetry is marvellously his own.’ — Stephen Knight, Times Literary Supplement Conor O’Callaghan’s third collection, his first for six years, navigates a channel between half-truth and deception. Narratives, at once private and impersonal, happen against the backdrops of desire and love’s complexities. Fiction, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, is a collection of broad formal and thematic range. A pair of gloves becomes an erotic keepsake. An Irish family survives the morbid paranoia of contemporary wartime America . The meaning of ‘hello’ mutates through its relationship to the telephone. The creatures of ‘ Free State ’ coinage vanish from legal tender, and a young woman encounters her first poem in print. If Fiction is often bleak — its version unreliable, its vision unforgiving — it is as often witty and tender and deceptively rhapsodic. It expands the achievement of one of Ireland’s most original and engaging younger poets.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1968 in Newry in Northern Ireland, Conor O Callaghan grew up in Dundalk, a town just south of the Irish border. He served as Writer-in-Residence at University College, Dublin, taught at Wake Forest University for four years, and co-held the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University. Currently, he teaches at Sheffield Hallam University in England, where he teaches courses in creative writing, modern poetry, and Anglo-Irish literature. He presently lives in England, but has spent time traveling around England, Ireland, the United States, and Italy. WFU Press has published Seatown and Earlier Poems (2000); Fiction (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award; and most recently The Sun King (2013). His earliest books include The History of Rain (1993) and Seatown (1999), both published in Ireland by The Gallery Press. He is also the editor of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Poetry, Volume III. O Callaghan is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Patrick Kavanagh Award for his first collection of poetry, the Rooney Prize Special Award, and the Times Educational Fellowship. He was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1994. In addition to poetry, Conor O Callaghan s interests extend to writing on sport, especially soccer and cricket. In 1996, Irish national radio aired O Callaghan s acclaimed radio documentary on cricket in Ireland, The Season. His prose memoir entitled Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War deals with the public uproar surrounding Ireland s involvement in the 2002 World Cup and made the bestseller lists in Ireland and the UK."

Edition details

• Publisher: The Gallery Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 185235383X
• ISBN 13: 9781852353834
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 75