As If By Magic

This generous Selected Poems from Paula Meehan, one of Ireland’s foremost poets and most distinctive voices, gathers work published between 1991 and 2016 from collections that have been lauded, awarded and widely translated, collections that have gained a large audience and a considerable reputation, nationally and internationally.

A great deal has changed in the world in the arc of time covered by this work, and those changes are noted and considered by poems that are remarkable for their clear-eyed witness. Meehan’s devotion to, and mastery of, her craft, has always been one of the key signatures of her work, as has been her immersion in her beloved native Dublin. In her Selected Poems we see this and more — her uncompromising engagement with the politics of gender and class, her love of the natural world and her grief at what threatens it, her holistic and visionary impulse to bless the creation, to be grateful for her place in it.