Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry | Rare & Collectible

Conor O'Callaghan - Fiction (clothbound, ltd. ed.)

Short-listed for the Irish Times Poetry Now Prize

"The Irish poet Conor O'Callaghan ought to have more of a reputation here: few American poets his age (he is thirty-eight) bring to the cozy matter of domesticity so much vigor and readiness. ...The house-of-mirrors deceits and self-deceits of estranged lovers here receive full, impressive representation. ..." Poetry

Fiction, Conor O'Callaghan's newest volume of poems, uses the metanarrative of writing as its overarching theme. From the title poem's first line, "None of this is true," to the poem "This," late in the volume, we are aware that the writing begins with a "pencil," with the physical act of writing, and ends with the sense that the search for an original voice is haunted by the mimicry involved in perfecting the craft (in "darkness…littered with mockingbirds").

Conor O'Callaghan's Fiction is fraught with the frisson of its own creation, as one would expect from a poet coming fully into his extraordinary powers.

"Fiction is good at producing ... darkness-tinged satisfactions."
Chris Jennings, Books in Canada

$35.00
2005   80 pages 
clothbound first edition with plain vellum wrapper
Limited, signed, & numbered
ISBN 978-1-930630-24-6