Tongues of Fire
by Seán Hewitt
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Pub Date 23 Apr 2020 | Archive Date 30 Jul 2020
Random House UK, Vintage Publishing | Jonathan Cape
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Description
A remarkable first collection by an important new poet
In this collection, Seán Hewitt gives us poems of a rare musicality and grace. By turns searing and meditative, these are lyrics concerned with the matter of the world, its physicality, but also attuned to the proximity of each moment, each thing, to the spiritual.
Here, there is sex, grief, and loss, but also a committed dedication to life, hope and renewal. Drawing on the religious, the sacred and the profane, this is a collection in which men meet in the woods, where matter is corrupted and remade. There are prayers, hymns, vespers, incantations, and longer poems which attempt to propel themselves towards the transcendent.
In this book, there is always the sense of fragility allied with strength, a violence harnessed and unleashed. The collection ends with a series of elegies for the poet’s father: in the face of despair, we are met with a fierce brightness, and a reclamation of the spiritual. ‘This is when / we make God, and speak in his voice.’
Paying close attention to altered states and the consolations and strangeness of the natural world, this is the first book from a major poet.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781787332263 |
| PRICE | £10.00 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 80 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Siobhan D, Reviewer
Tongues of Fire a collection of poetry that focuses on viewing life through nature, on physicality and reality but also the sacred and untouchable, and on grief, loss, and illness. The poems are mostly short lyric poems, weaving together ideas of nature, belief, and personal connection. What is particularly vivid as you read the collection is the ways in which the natural world is returned to, and offers an escape from the world, and how the poems show this through moments and details of plants and settings as ways of encapsulating feelings, from sex and desire to sadness and grief. This felt particularly notable in poems like 'Adoration', which moves from a nature walk to a Berlin club and back again, and it really gives a sense of how the personal can also be part of something much larger about life and earth.
These poems feel like an escape into the tiny details of outside, a kind of mechanism of looking for the natural and the meaning when things seem random or difficult. This was a great collection to sit down with and become immersed in the senses and physicality, but also the emotions of the poems.
Hafsah H, Reviewer
Wow. This is a collection of stunning poetry, and every poem sung to me. I loved how every poem was linked in some way to nature, the reoccurring theme of nature permeates the collection and I think it's beautiful. I found that the poems about the author's personal experiences were extremely moving, they were generally my favourites. It's an amazing poetry collection, written by an author who has exceptional writing skills.
Euan T, Bookseller
I have spent a cosy afternoon in the company of Tongues of Fire. Hewitt's debut collection gave me a sense of how he views the rhythms of nature and the ways in which humans are capable of admiring/trespassing on the natural world. The middle section of the collection is comprised of part translations of a middle-Irish tale named Buile Suibhne. The poems that moved me most were those that explore sexuality, the frailty of loss and the comfort of nature. In 'Tree of Jesse', the effect of his father recalling a dream with Seán in it has stuck with me. I found this description of dreams to be particularly moving:
"and I felt in that moment
the privilege of being alive
in your mind, to have been remade
beyond myself and beamed out
in the flickering room of your sleep."
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