Fireflies

Frank Ormsby's new collection travels among places strange and familiar: from the shaping memories of an upbringing in rural County Fermanagh, to a Belfast reinventing itself in a new century and the exhilarating novelty of America. In the first part of Fireflies Ormsby explores the past and vibrant present of an area of New York State which he has visited for the past twelve years. It remains to him as elusive as the 'fugitive selves' of the fireflies of the title. The latter part of the book engages with the poet's experience of his native Northern Ireland - the sour legacy of the Troubles, the dynamics of a community extending and remaking itself. Ormsby says he is by nature an 'anxious optimist', and these precisely lyrical poems are by turns elegiac and celebratory.

Table of Contents:
Contents PART ONE Fireflies One Looks at One The Kensico Dam At the Lazy Boy Saloon and Ale Bar Valhalla Journal Next Stop Cemetery Walks In Kensico Cemetery After the Storm Immigrants Stormy Night, Route 87 Dry Side or Wet Side? Davis Brook Washington’s Headquarters What Will Survive New World Two Birthday Poems Some Older American Poets On Not Hearing the American Nightjar Catching Fireflies Fireflies in a Belfast Garden After the Japanese Firefly Hour The Celtic Firefly PART TWO The Aluminium Box Silent Reading The Rabbit Smiling Foetus The Hole in the Roof Blackbirds, North Circular Road from City Journal Aubade The Ice-Bird The Shirt Factory Derelict Building, Limestone Road Storm, North Circular Road, 2 a.m. The Three Czechs Small World Leaving Minnesota Colin Middleton, ‘Lagan, Annadale’ (1941) The Telescope The Statues The Gate Avigliana Some Spring Moons, North Circular Road The Whooper Swan The Builder

About the Author :
Frank Ormsby was born in 1947 in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.He describes himself as by nature an 'anxious optimist'.His work draws on his rural upbringing in Co Fermanagh but increasingly reflects a sense of Belfast where has lived since 1998.He is a graduate and postgraduate of Queen's University, Belfast and has worked as an editor and published three collections of poems.In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Awards in memory of John Hewitt and in 2002 the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award from the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota.Since 1975 he has been Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

Review :
Selected as a Favourite Collection of 2010 - Morning Star '...humane and attentive poems.' - John Greening, Times Literary Supplement, 30 July 2010 'Ormsby [...] is a mirror of his times.' - Philip McDonagh, The Irish Times, 21 November 2009