Hold On! The Holding Centre is here!

Harry Clifton’s newest volume, The Holding Centre: Selected Poems 1974-2004, has arrived!

This book presents a thirty-year poetic trajectory for Clifton, a writer who has lived and worked between the secular and the religious, Eros and history, Ireland and elsewhere.

Get your copy now!
…

You are not the first, you will not be the last
To follow your own shadow
As it lengthens. Dispassionate,
Steady your gaze. Already, it is late,
And the blue deepens, merciless and clear.
The unities fall into place.
Disillusionments, lost years

Are part of the story. The rest is praise–
Be equal to it, pay your way
With the same blank cheque that floats so many lives,
Your birthright and your crossing fee
When the promised day arrives.

from “When The Promised Day Arrives”