“Paul Balfe’s poems are distinguished by a forensically intelligent eye for the telling detail which cuts to the heart of seemingly inconsequential encounters or childhood memories. All are rendered fresh in poems that need no recourse to verbal pyrotechnics to lodge themselves within our imaginations. Whether describing a father and a son seeing their past and future within each other; a child remembering his mother finding momentary sanctuary in a grotto off Meath Street or a cow finding no sanctuary from the harsh reality of farming; a horrific case of incest summed up in the rage of four dispassionate lines; the curious juxtaposition of a hospice built beside a graveyard or an ingrained memory of how social distinctions were revealed even within the coded buttons of confirmation outfits; Balfe mines universal truths from everyday life, dissecting his experiences in poems that are shrewd, honest, humane, unflinching and memorable.”
Dermot Bolger
Four Seasons 11
Desert in an Oasis 12
Summer 13
Curtains 14
No Reprieve 15
Grotto 16
Retrospection 17
The Pieta 18
To Choose a Book by its Cover 19
Don’t Buy a Damaged One 20
Between Two Eternities 21
Future Tense 22
Closing Down Sale 23
Mismatch 24
TV Suicide 25
Juxtaposition 26
In Twelve Acts 27
Transition 28
On Going to Work Each Morning I Listen to the Weather Man and Thank God for BBC Radio 4 29
The Soldier’s Dream 30
The Squirrel 31
Autumn 32
Buttons 33
Snow 34
The Summing Up 35
A Different Lens 36
Indian Summer 38
It’s Business, Only Business (Lamentation for Bhopal) 39
How Soon the Thaw 40
Stop Off 41
Breaking the Ice (Tommy) 42
Duende 43
The Disappeared 44
Keeping Watch 45
Christmas Past 46
Chips 48
To Do Lists 49
Wolf 50
1913 51
Mary Magdalene 52
Brasses (Mr. and Mrs. Kearns, my neighbours) 53
Tax Take 54
Carved in Stone 55
My Cat Bob 56
Slipping Through the Cracks 57
Hooke’s Law 58
Giving While Living 59
The Excuse Factory 60
Crows 61
One Point Nine Percent 62
Cold Water 63
Quirk of Fate 64
About the Author 67
