A Time for Voices: Selected Poems 1960-1990

Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets. He achieved inter-national recognition with his shocking epic poem Cromwell, following this with the even more notorious Book of Judas, which topped the Irish bestsellers list. His latest piece of mischief, Poetry My Arse, out-Judases Cromwell, sinking its teeth into the pants of poetry itself. But his poetry has always taken on the mantle of the outcast, revealing as well as reviling, as A Time for Voices clearly shows. This selection draws on thirty years of his poetry, including classics such as My Dark Fathers, The Visitor and Poem from a Three Year Old, as well as a spattering from Cromwell. A Time for Voices is now out of print. All the poems from the book were reprinted in his later retrospective, Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004. 'I believe poetry must always be a flight from deadening authoritative egotism and must find its voices in the byways, laneways, backyards, nooks and crannies of self. It is critics who talk of “an authentic voice”; but a poet, living his uncertainties, is riddled with different voices, many of them in vicious conflict. The poem is the arena where these voices engage each other in open and hidden conflict, and continue to do so until they are all heard.’ – Brendan Kennelly

About the Author :
Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland’s most distinguished and best loved poets, as well as a renowned teacher and cultural commentator. Born in 1936 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 now lives in Listowel, Co. Kerry. He has published more than 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 is 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 Journey into Joy: Selected Prose, edited by Åke 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.

Review :
With considerable honesty and bravery, Kennelly enters and becomes others in order to perceive, understand and suffer…always moving, probing and doubting…a unique book. With A Time for Voices, Kennelly can be included among the Irish greats.