Pacemaker
Published on 15. September 2022
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-1-8383126-5-7 (ISBN)
Description
Every time I write about my heart, I write about walking. Every time I write about walking, I write about my heart. What is it like to be born with a congenital heart defect? What does it mean to live knowing your heart will one day fail you? How do you walk without moving a muscle? In Pacemaker, poet David Toms deftly blends creative nonfiction, poetry and diary in an account of resisting, confronting, and living with a rare heart condition. His experience, including his hospitalisation during the Covid-19 pandemic, speaks to all of us in its exploration of what it means to live in a fragile yet resilient body, to walk multiple challenging paths, and to always a find a way to keep moving.
Reviews / Votes
"Pacemaker is a rare volume, a deeply considered meditation on the heart and the stride that encompasses so much more besides. It trembles with the truth of a self, articulated with an eloquence seldom encountered. David Toms has written a beautiful, beautiful book - I loved it." Doireann Ni Ghriofa"A work of intimacy and shimmering precision, Pacemaker is the testament of a unique mind and heart, alive to the world in extraordinary times. Toms' prose is poetic, vital and inventive, with a lightness that makes it compulsively readable." Roisin Kiberd
"Pacemaker is a moving, beautifully-written memoir about the body's limits, walking and hope." Patrick Freyne
"A deeply moving personal meditation on walking, health, and wellness, whose themes resonated profoundly with me and remained in my mind long after reading." Arnold Thomas Fanning
"In Pacemaker, everything slows down. Time bends. You lose sight of where you are in the world as you feel your way through David Toms' lens. This is beautiful, sparse prose - a memoir full of honesty. At times a painful and brutal tale on what it means for someone to make their imprint, the cost of a step, and how to set a new pace within their challenging world. But ultimately, it shows how important the heart is. A powerful book, I loved it." Elaine Feeney
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ireland
Dimensions
Height: 204 mm
Width: 138 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-8383126-5-7 (9781838312657)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
David Toms is a writer from Waterford, now living and working in Norway. His poetry collections include Northly (Turas Press, 2019), Soma | Sema (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2011), and several chapbooks. His creative work has been published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies across Ireland, the UK, the US and Europe, including in several issues of Banshee.