The Swerve
The Swerve, his tenth collection, is Peter Sirr’s first book of poems since The Gravity Wave (2019), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Farmgate National Poetry Award. It is a book as ample as it is confident in its risk taking. From the wit of ‘Border Control’ (reminiscent of Richard Wilbur’s) through the movement and energy of the beautiful title poem, The Swerve ruminates on Tang poets and engages in conversations with Buson and Borges. Its mixed tones range from the bold assertions of ‘A Valediction’ (‘Goodbye, year, / we thought you’d never leave.’) and the positive note of this poem’s ending to the delicacy of ‘Threshold’ in which ‘Chen Zhongsen / is carving two Tang poems // on a single grey strand / of his wife’s hair’.
Peter Sirr
- Gallery Books
- 9781911338451
- 104 pages
- €13.90
- Paperback
- Ireland
- Poetry by individual poets
