If All the World and Love Were Young

$14.95

In Stephen Sexton’s remarkable debut, the video games of his childhood are once again a way to slip through the looking glass; to be in two places at once; to be two people at once. In these poems about the death of his mother, Sexton charts the familiar levels of Super Mario World, whose flowered landscapes bleed into our world—and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it. This moving, otherworldly narrative is a daring exploration of memory, grief, and the necessity of the unreal.

Praise for Stephen Sexton

“A poetry debut fit to compare with Seamus Heaney.”
– The Times

“Every poem in this book is a marvel. Taken all together they make up a work of almost miraculous depth and beauty.”
– Sally Rooney

“A remarkable requiem for the poet’s mother and for the worlds of childhood imagination … a beautiful, vital, generous work of art.”
– Lily Ní Dhomhnaill, The Stinging Fly

A Sunday Times, New Statesman and Telegraph Book of the Year 2019

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

Winner of the E. M. Forster Award

Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize

Shortlisted for the John Pollard Poetry Prize