The Bright Room by Michael McCarthy Em Strang ‘A perfectly pitched quest for

‘A perfectly pitched quest for lost innocence’ John Burnside

It is a device

It sounds out the complex and ambivalent terrain of early motherhood – its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love – reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life

the poems of Elyse Fenton’s Clamor turn a lyric lens on the language we use to talk about war and atrocity

spiked with humour

The Bright Room by Michael McCarthy Em Strang ‘A perfectly pitched quest forThe Bright Room brings together poems written over the last decade. This outstanding book confirms Michael McCarthy as an insightful storyteller: wise and grounded in the everyday the poems nevertheless celebrate the numinous moments in all our lives. As poet and as priest, Michael McCarthy in this book bears a sort of witness to the world, at that point where the ordinary touches upon the eternal. Bill Herbert