‘Mícheál McCann’s debut collection, Devotion, is a stately book — courtly, even.’ So wrote Declan Ryan in The Irish Times. In that rapturously received first book the author applied a modern setting, sensibility and set of references to a classic Irish lament. In Lives of the Saints he builds on biographical details of Christian figures and situates them in contemporary states of experience and emotion. Centrepieces of this eclectic collection are an ode to a recycling centre and ‘The Impossible Request’ in which the poet’s grandmother forgets that he has told her that he is gay (‘I know, pet, I know’) and asks if he has any girlfriends yet. Assured in its risks, vigorous in its enthusiasms, from its first ecstatic injunction Lives of the Saints is a collection to make one think and feel, then think again.
As I drive home, without shame, I decide on the name
of a girlfriend and her smile will be as wide as the morning.
— ‘The Impossible Request’
‘Mícheál McCann’s debut collection, Devotion, is a stately book — courtly, even.’ So wrote Declan Ryan in The Irish Times. In that rapturously received first book the author applied a modern setting, sensibility and set of references to a classic Irish lament. In Lives of the Saints he builds on biographical details of Christian figures and situates them in contemporary states of experience and emotion. Centrepieces of this eclectic collection are an ode to a recycling centre and ‘The Impossible Request’ in which the poet’s grandmother forgets that he has told her that he is gay (‘I know, pet, I know’) and asks if he has any girlfriends yet. Assured in its risks, vigorous in its enthusiasms, from its first ecstatic injunction Lives of the Saints is a collection to make one think and feel, then think again.
As I drive home, without shame, I decide on the name
of a girlfriend and her smile will be as wide as the morning.
— ‘The Impossible Request’
