The Tumbling Paddy

$15.95

The Tumbling Paddy, Frank Ormsby’s eighth collection, brings together many of his time-honored themes—landscape, the rural life, the making of poetry—and layers them with an elegiac sense of time passing and illness gathering. Beginning with a sequence on the Florence Court mansion of County Fermanagh and the nearby Marble Arch Caves, the poems often go spelunking through histories lost in the dark, while the concluding sequence, “Autumn Burials,” lowers its voice to the whisper of death: “I gather the notes I have made for a poem, / like crumpled blossoms retrieved from a coffin lid.” Throughout, Ormsby balances reverence with his wry sense of humor, and sometimes bawdy touch, as well as his penchant for the miniature poem, continuing his long-running “Small World” haiku series. The book’s title poem, describing a hay rake, gathers many of Ormsby’s themes into one symbol. Presenting rural life in decline, or the poet’s experience living with Parkinson’s disease, the tumbling paddy moves “like a clumsy clockwork,” “perfecting the work of the harrow” to turn a crop (of poetry). Another poem, “Landscapes,” transposes the field to art in “a gallery the size of Ireland”—“In a country newly ours, / we move from field to gallery, / from gallery to field.”

Listen to Frank Ormsby Read from The Tumbling Paddy:

Praise for Frank Ormsby

“When he explores again a lifetime’s themes and preoccupations, Frank Ormsby, like all true poets, mysteriously finds himself breaking new ground. Even more uncannily, several of his recent poems already read like classics. Wise and vulnerable, this poet courageously scans the horizons presented by illness and death. Love poet as well as elegist, he embraces heartbreak and gladness. Its depth of thought and emotion gives The Tumbling Paddy a sense of resurrection.” —Michael Longley

“In confronting Northern Ireland’s violent past amidst its seemingly idyllic setting, Ormsby has successfully managed to convey not just the individual personal cost, but also the depth of the communal loss … This honest Ulsterman is not afraid to challenge us, but he also gives us comfort.” —Emmanuel Touhey, The Irish Times

“a seriously funny, entertaining poet, though, nearly always with some serious intent.” —Belinda Cooke, The North

“Ormsby, like Kavanagh before him, sees the universal in the parochial, and produces carefully honed, unerringly accurate depictions …” —Nessa O’Mahony, Poetry Ireland Review

Customers in Ireland, the UK, and the EU: This title is available from Bloodaxe Books here.