Familiar Strangers
New & Selected Poems 1960-2004
Published on 27. May 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
496 pages
978-1-85224-663-1 (ISBN)
Description
Familiar Strangers is Brendan Kennelly's own selection from over 20 poetry books written over five decades. This landmark volume replaces his earlier selections A Time for Voices, Breathing Spaces and Begin. But Kennelly has revisited his life work, re-scoring familiar and estranged pieces into new gatherings which reflect his preoccupations more powerfully, bringing together poems from different times - and adding many new, previously lost or uncollected poems - so that they speak in chorus like the generations of people they celebrate.
Reviews / Votes
'Newspapers celebrate greatness, heroism, achievement and genius in our midst, but sometimes don't pay sufficient attention to the real heroes who matter to us; the people who make a serious contribution to a nation's mental and spiritual well-being. A giant in this area is Brendan Kennelly. He is the people's poet. He spends his life wondering and thinking and daring to think and see differently. He also asks impossible questions and suggests unthinkable answers about the things that really matter. And he refuses to be precious or out of touch with the rest of us' - Jim Farrelly, Editor-in-Chief, Sunday Tribune; 'With considerable honesty and bravery Kennelly enters and becomes others in order to perceive, understand and suffer... always moving, probing and doubting, never willing or able to settle on any one certainty... There is clash and conflict, cruelty and irony, sardonic wit, passion' - Aidan Murphy; 'He lets us watch as he stands bowlegged at a crossroads in time and culture, playing stretch with knives of fear and faith, irony and soul, the fist of vision, the hard-nose of reality' - Bono; 'Kennelly's capacity to strip himself and fight in naked combat with the giants that plague us, make him Ireland's most endearing and reckless poet' - Mark Patrick Hederman; 'A very singular voice which owes nothing really to anybody, except to Kennelly's spiritual and geographical origins and, of course, to his own people' - John B. Keane; 'His poems shine with the wisdom of somebody who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and familiarity and wonder of life' - Sister Stanislaus KennedyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
837 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-663-1 (9781852246631)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Brendan Kennelly (1936-2021) was one of Ireland's most distinguished and best loved poets, as well as a renowned teacher and cultural commentator. Born in Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, he was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for over 30 years, and retired from teaching in 2005. He published over 30 books of poetry, including Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (2004), which includes the whole of his book-length poem The Man Made of Rain (1998). He was best-known for two controversial poetry books, Cromwell, published in Ireland in 1983 and in Britain by Bloodaxe in 1987, and his epic poem The Book of Judas (1991), which topped the Irish bestsellers list: a shorter version was published by Bloodaxe in 2002 as The Little Book of Judas. His third epic, Poetry My Arse (1995), did much to outdo these in notoriety. All these remain available separately from Bloodaxe, along with his more recent titles: Glimpses (2001), Martial Art (2003), Now (2006), Reservoir Voices (2009), The Essential Brendan Kennelly: Selected Poems, edited by Terence Brown and Michael Longley, with audio CD (2011), and Guff (2013). His drama titles include When Then Is Now (2006), a trilogy of his modern versions of three Greek tragedies (all previously published by Bloodaxe): Sophocles' Antigone and Euripides' Medea and The Trojan Women. His Antigone and The Trojan Women were both first performed at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, in 1986 and 1993 respectively; Medea premiered in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1988, toured in England in 1989 and was broadcast by BBC Radio 3. His other plays include Lorca's Blood Wedding (Northern Stage, Newcastle & Bloodaxe, 1996). His translations of Irish poetry are available in Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish (Mercier Press, 1989). He has edited several anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970/1981), Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present, with Katie Donovan and A. Norman Jeffares (Gill & Macmillan, 1994), and Dublines, with Katie Donovan (Bloodaxe Books, 1995), and published two early novels, The Crooked Cross (1963) and The Florentines (1967). His Journey into Joy: Selected Prose, edited by Ake Persson, was published by Bloodaxe in 1994, along with Dark Fathers into Light, a critical anthology on his work edited by Richard Pine. John McDonagh's critical study Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts was published in The Liffey Press's Contemporary Irish Writers series in 2004. His anthology The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me - co-edited with Neil Astley - was published by Bloodaxe in 2022.
Content
1 LIFTING THE MOON
23 A Giving
24 Yes
25 The year
25 The True Thing
26 Measures
27 Let It Go
28 Conference
31 A Host of Ghosts
31 Whatever
32 A Language
32 Someone, Somewhere
33 Proof
33 Leaving
34 The Prodigal Son
2 QUESTIONING ANSWERS
37 To Learn
37 The Stick
38 ozzie
38 prades
39 ?ushed
39 skool
40 Small Black Stars
40 Catechism
41 My Mind of Questions
44 After School
44 A Return
45 The Brightest of All
46 The Smell
47 Thorn
48 Horsechestnuts
48 Lost
49 The Horse's Head
51 The Hill of Fire
52 The Fall
52 The Stones
54 Nails
54 Innocent
55 The Visitor
57 Tasty
57 The Big Words
59 Poem from a Three Year Old
60 Nineteen forty-two
60 Children's Hospital
61 The Learning of Pity
61 Girl on a Tightrope
64 Rebuke
64 Play
65 The Kiss
66 A Leather Apron
66 Ten Bob
67 The Stammer
69 The Learning
70 John Keane's Field
71 God's Eye
3 BODIES OF SPIRITS
75 Ella Cantillon
75 Litter
76 A Mad Woman
76 Union
77 A Kerry Christmas
77 A Cry for Art O'Leary
83 I Met a Woman
83 Acteon
84 The Hope of Wings
85 Girl in a Rope
85 At the Party
86 A Great Day
87 Moloney Discovers the Winter
90 The Dose
91 Fragments
91 Steps
92 It Was Indeed Love
92 Santorini
93 The Exhibition
94 Love Cry
95 Lightness
95 Love-child
96 Sister
96 Miss Anne
97 Smell
97 Eyes
98 A Girl
108 Eily Kilbride
108 Rebecca Hill
109 Feed the Children
109 Citizens of the Night
110 Baby
111 A Drowned Girl
112 Clean
112 The Gift Returned
114 There Are Women (after Mandelstam)
114 We Are Living
115 Muses
116 May the Silence Break
117 A Kind of Trust
118 A Passionate and Gentle Voice
119 Separation
120 Willow
122 Too Near
123 A Viable Odyssey
124 bridge
124 To You
125 Tonight You Cry
127 The Furies
127 Warning
128 The Moment of?Letlive
129 Beyond Knowledge
131 Mary Magdalene (after Pasternak)
133 She
133 Wish
134 Knives
134 Assassin
135 Phone Call
136 Her Spirit
136 Keep in Touch
137 Birth
138 The Burning of Her Hair
140 A Holy War
140 Sacrifice
141 The Fire Is Crying
142 A Half-?nished Garden
142 Her Face
143 The Hag of Beare
145 She Sees Her Own Distance
145 A Restoration
146 More Dust
146 Wings
146 The Habit of Redemption
148 Gestures
148 Westland Row
149 The Celtic Twilight
149 The Girl Next Door
150 Maggie Hanni?n's way for women
150 Irish proverb
150 Woman in a Doorway
151 Padraig O Conaire's Daughter Visits Galway on Her Honeymoon
151 The Scarf
152 Speculations
152 Portrait
153 Nora O'Donnell
153 The Work Was Coming Out Right
154 Last Kicks
155 Her Laugh
155 The Good
156 Therese
157 Saint Brigid's Prayer
157 To Marina Tsvetaeva (after Mandelstam)
158 Is It Possible I Shall See You?(after Mandelstam)
5 THE MAN MADE OF RAIN
159 The Man Made of Rain
6 GUFF AND MUSCLE
228 No Image Fits
229 The Third Force
230 Correspondence
230 Consequences
231 A Teeny Bit
231 Saint Augustine on God
233 The Sin
236 Adam
236 I Saw a Beautiful Man
237 Saint Augustine's Toe
237 A Man of Faith
238 Who Killed the Man
239 Baile Bocht
240 Shy
240 Needles
242 The Grip
242 Cock
242 The Pig-killer
243 The Pig
246 Time for the Knife
247 The Tippler
247 Work
248 Man Making Fire
249 The King
249 The Thatcher
250 The Swimmer
251 A Man Undeceived
251 The Runner
252 All the time in the world
253 That Look
253 A Man in Smoke Remembered
254 A Man, But Rarely Mentioned
255 Night Drive
257 Oliver to His Brother
257 I Wonder Now What Distance
258 Always
259 The Love of God
261 Missing
261 A Glimpse of Starlings
262 Blood
263 A Winter Rose
264 The Names of the Dead Are Lightning
264 I See You Dancing, Father
265 Oliver to His Son
266 Where Women Pray and Judge
266 Oliver to His Daughter
266 Blood
270 James Joyce's Death-mask
271 The Dinner
273 The Blind Man
274 I See
275 Moloney Sees Through a Blind Eye
277 Kind Eyes
278 An OK Guy
278 According to The Moderate Intelligencer
279 The House I Built
279 Courage
281 The Loud Men
282 Time for Breaking
283 The Second Tree
284 A Black and Tan
286 The Grudge
288 What Use?
288 Old Soldier
289 Service
289 Ask the Children
290 Tail-end Charlie
291 The Story
292 The cries repeat themselves
292 Roger Boyle
294 But it did (a drama)
294 A Bottle
295 Columkille the Writer
295 What Else?
296 Sebastian
296 Light Dying
298 Oliver to a Friend
298 A Man I Knew
299 Raglan Lane
300 A Real Presence
301 Late Yeats
302 Penny
303 Not a word
303 Death of a Strong Man
303 A Tale for Tourists
305 Mastery
306 The Wake
308 Between Sky and Stone
308 A Peering Boy
309 If You Were Bold Enough
309 To Rembrandt (after Mandelstam)
310 Milk
313 Prodigal (after Mandelstam)
313 Treasure
314 The Hurt
315 Immediate Man
316 Six of One
319 A Short Story
319 Heigh Ho
320 The Ovens
321 The Kill
321 John Bradburne
322 Failure
323 Islandman
344 He Left Us
344 The Bell
345 Fool
346 Killing the Winter
346 Spring
347 Heat
347 Loss
348 Design
6 SAVAGE CIVILITIES
351 Moments When the Light
352 Pram
352 The Hole
354 Our Place
355 Johnny Gobless
355 The Fool's Rod
358 A Parable of Pimlico
358 In Dublin
359 Crossing the bridge
359 Bewley's coarse brown bread (unsliced)
361 Hunchback
362 Eating a star
362 Ambulance
363 A Visit
364 Dream of a Black Fox
365 The Black Fox, Again
366 Clearing a Space
368 Herself and himself
369 Lost place
370 Good Souls, to Survive
7 HISTORY
373 The Lislaughtin Cross
374 Lislaughtin Abbey
375 A Friend of the People
376 My Dark Fathers
377 The Limerick Train
380 A Small Light
388 Shelley in Dublin
394 The Saddest News
395 The Big House
396 Wall
397 Beatings
398 The Curse
398 Local History
399 Three Tides
399 Freedom Fighter
400 My Indifference
400 The Prisoner
402 Traffic Lights, Merrion Road, Dublin 4
405 Killybegs
407 A Running Battle
408 De Valera at Ninety-two
410 Oliver Speaks to His Countrymen
414 Points of View
414 Calling the Shots
415 The House That Jack Didn't Build
417 Statement of the Former Occupant
419 The Joke
422 The Ship of Flame
8 VOICES
425 Connection
425 Shell
426 Sea
427 The Island
428 The Sandwoman
429 Bread
430 Lightning
431 Book
432 House
432 Crow
433 The Singing Tree
434 The Tree's Voice
434 The Cherry Trees
437 The Speech of Trees
437 Latin
439 Word
440 Loneliness
442 Tide
442 Bullet
442 Peace
443 Skin
445 Scar
445 Bomb
447 Freckle
448 Time
449 Worm
450 Money
450 Rumour
452 Silence
453 Raindrop
453 Key
455 Heart
456 Poetry
457 Game
9 THAT MUSIC MAY SURVIVE
461 The Gift
461 Blackbird
462 God's Laughter
463 Living Ghosts
463 The Singers
465 Published at Last!
466 The Singing Girl Is Easy in Her Skill
467 Sing and Be Damned to It
467 The Wren-boy
468 Sounds
469 The Voice-of-Us-All
469 Star
470 The Whiteness
471 Entering
472 I can't ?nd you anywhere
473 Mud
474 Prayer to Venus (after Lucretius)
475 A Soft Amen
476 At home
476 The Adventure of Learning
477 There Will Be Dreams
477 Like the Swallow
478 Begin
481 Index of titles & first lines
23 A Giving
24 Yes
25 The year
25 The True Thing
26 Measures
27 Let It Go
28 Conference
31 A Host of Ghosts
31 Whatever
32 A Language
32 Someone, Somewhere
33 Proof
33 Leaving
34 The Prodigal Son
2 QUESTIONING ANSWERS
37 To Learn
37 The Stick
38 ozzie
38 prades
39 ?ushed
39 skool
40 Small Black Stars
40 Catechism
41 My Mind of Questions
44 After School
44 A Return
45 The Brightest of All
46 The Smell
47 Thorn
48 Horsechestnuts
48 Lost
49 The Horse's Head
51 The Hill of Fire
52 The Fall
52 The Stones
54 Nails
54 Innocent
55 The Visitor
57 Tasty
57 The Big Words
59 Poem from a Three Year Old
60 Nineteen forty-two
60 Children's Hospital
61 The Learning of Pity
61 Girl on a Tightrope
64 Rebuke
64 Play
65 The Kiss
66 A Leather Apron
66 Ten Bob
67 The Stammer
69 The Learning
70 John Keane's Field
71 God's Eye
3 BODIES OF SPIRITS
75 Ella Cantillon
75 Litter
76 A Mad Woman
76 Union
77 A Kerry Christmas
77 A Cry for Art O'Leary
83 I Met a Woman
83 Acteon
84 The Hope of Wings
85 Girl in a Rope
85 At the Party
86 A Great Day
87 Moloney Discovers the Winter
90 The Dose
91 Fragments
91 Steps
92 It Was Indeed Love
92 Santorini
93 The Exhibition
94 Love Cry
95 Lightness
95 Love-child
96 Sister
96 Miss Anne
97 Smell
97 Eyes
98 A Girl
108 Eily Kilbride
108 Rebecca Hill
109 Feed the Children
109 Citizens of the Night
110 Baby
111 A Drowned Girl
112 Clean
112 The Gift Returned
114 There Are Women (after Mandelstam)
114 We Are Living
115 Muses
116 May the Silence Break
117 A Kind of Trust
118 A Passionate and Gentle Voice
119 Separation
120 Willow
122 Too Near
123 A Viable Odyssey
124 bridge
124 To You
125 Tonight You Cry
127 The Furies
127 Warning
128 The Moment of?Letlive
129 Beyond Knowledge
131 Mary Magdalene (after Pasternak)
133 She
133 Wish
134 Knives
134 Assassin
135 Phone Call
136 Her Spirit
136 Keep in Touch
137 Birth
138 The Burning of Her Hair
140 A Holy War
140 Sacrifice
141 The Fire Is Crying
142 A Half-?nished Garden
142 Her Face
143 The Hag of Beare
145 She Sees Her Own Distance
145 A Restoration
146 More Dust
146 Wings
146 The Habit of Redemption
148 Gestures
148 Westland Row
149 The Celtic Twilight
149 The Girl Next Door
150 Maggie Hanni?n's way for women
150 Irish proverb
150 Woman in a Doorway
151 Padraig O Conaire's Daughter Visits Galway on Her Honeymoon
151 The Scarf
152 Speculations
152 Portrait
153 Nora O'Donnell
153 The Work Was Coming Out Right
154 Last Kicks
155 Her Laugh
155 The Good
156 Therese
157 Saint Brigid's Prayer
157 To Marina Tsvetaeva (after Mandelstam)
158 Is It Possible I Shall See You?(after Mandelstam)
5 THE MAN MADE OF RAIN
159 The Man Made of Rain
6 GUFF AND MUSCLE
228 No Image Fits
229 The Third Force
230 Correspondence
230 Consequences
231 A Teeny Bit
231 Saint Augustine on God
233 The Sin
236 Adam
236 I Saw a Beautiful Man
237 Saint Augustine's Toe
237 A Man of Faith
238 Who Killed the Man
239 Baile Bocht
240 Shy
240 Needles
242 The Grip
242 Cock
242 The Pig-killer
243 The Pig
246 Time for the Knife
247 The Tippler
247 Work
248 Man Making Fire
249 The King
249 The Thatcher
250 The Swimmer
251 A Man Undeceived
251 The Runner
252 All the time in the world
253 That Look
253 A Man in Smoke Remembered
254 A Man, But Rarely Mentioned
255 Night Drive
257 Oliver to His Brother
257 I Wonder Now What Distance
258 Always
259 The Love of God
261 Missing
261 A Glimpse of Starlings
262 Blood
263 A Winter Rose
264 The Names of the Dead Are Lightning
264 I See You Dancing, Father
265 Oliver to His Son
266 Where Women Pray and Judge
266 Oliver to His Daughter
266 Blood
270 James Joyce's Death-mask
271 The Dinner
273 The Blind Man
274 I See
275 Moloney Sees Through a Blind Eye
277 Kind Eyes
278 An OK Guy
278 According to The Moderate Intelligencer
279 The House I Built
279 Courage
281 The Loud Men
282 Time for Breaking
283 The Second Tree
284 A Black and Tan
286 The Grudge
288 What Use?
288 Old Soldier
289 Service
289 Ask the Children
290 Tail-end Charlie
291 The Story
292 The cries repeat themselves
292 Roger Boyle
294 But it did (a drama)
294 A Bottle
295 Columkille the Writer
295 What Else?
296 Sebastian
296 Light Dying
298 Oliver to a Friend
298 A Man I Knew
299 Raglan Lane
300 A Real Presence
301 Late Yeats
302 Penny
303 Not a word
303 Death of a Strong Man
303 A Tale for Tourists
305 Mastery
306 The Wake
308 Between Sky and Stone
308 A Peering Boy
309 If You Were Bold Enough
309 To Rembrandt (after Mandelstam)
310 Milk
313 Prodigal (after Mandelstam)
313 Treasure
314 The Hurt
315 Immediate Man
316 Six of One
319 A Short Story
319 Heigh Ho
320 The Ovens
321 The Kill
321 John Bradburne
322 Failure
323 Islandman
344 He Left Us
344 The Bell
345 Fool
346 Killing the Winter
346 Spring
347 Heat
347 Loss
348 Design
6 SAVAGE CIVILITIES
351 Moments When the Light
352 Pram
352 The Hole
354 Our Place
355 Johnny Gobless
355 The Fool's Rod
358 A Parable of Pimlico
358 In Dublin
359 Crossing the bridge
359 Bewley's coarse brown bread (unsliced)
361 Hunchback
362 Eating a star
362 Ambulance
363 A Visit
364 Dream of a Black Fox
365 The Black Fox, Again
366 Clearing a Space
368 Herself and himself
369 Lost place
370 Good Souls, to Survive
7 HISTORY
373 The Lislaughtin Cross
374 Lislaughtin Abbey
375 A Friend of the People
376 My Dark Fathers
377 The Limerick Train
380 A Small Light
388 Shelley in Dublin
394 The Saddest News
395 The Big House
396 Wall
397 Beatings
398 The Curse
398 Local History
399 Three Tides
399 Freedom Fighter
400 My Indifference
400 The Prisoner
402 Traffic Lights, Merrion Road, Dublin 4
405 Killybegs
407 A Running Battle
408 De Valera at Ninety-two
410 Oliver Speaks to His Countrymen
414 Points of View
414 Calling the Shots
415 The House That Jack Didn't Build
417 Statement of the Former Occupant
419 The Joke
422 The Ship of Flame
8 VOICES
425 Connection
425 Shell
426 Sea
427 The Island
428 The Sandwoman
429 Bread
430 Lightning
431 Book
432 House
432 Crow
433 The Singing Tree
434 The Tree's Voice
434 The Cherry Trees
437 The Speech of Trees
437 Latin
439 Word
440 Loneliness
442 Tide
442 Bullet
442 Peace
443 Skin
445 Scar
445 Bomb
447 Freckle
448 Time
449 Worm
450 Money
450 Rumour
452 Silence
453 Raindrop
453 Key
455 Heart
456 Poetry
457 Game
9 THAT MUSIC MAY SURVIVE
461 The Gift
461 Blackbird
462 God's Laughter
463 Living Ghosts
463 The Singers
465 Published at Last!
466 The Singing Girl Is Easy in Her Skill
467 Sing and Be Damned to It
467 The Wren-boy
468 Sounds
469 The Voice-of-Us-All
469 Star
470 The Whiteness
471 Entering
472 I can't ?nd you anywhere
473 Mud
474 Prayer to Venus (after Lucretius)
475 A Soft Amen
476 At home
476 The Adventure of Learning
477 There Will Be Dreams
477 Like the Swallow
478 Begin
481 Index of titles & first lines