Material Support

Eamonn Lynskey writes of the pressures of our fast-changing 21st century, sometimes too fast-changing (‘He Walks His Several Cities’), and how our lives are supported by a cast of unacknowledged assistants in the practical demands of day-to-day life (‘Your Humble Servant’). Poems of loss (‘Those First Evenings’ and ‘An Emigrant’s Return’) are complemented by others of renewal (‘This Turning Hour and Everything Intent’). Extraordinary events are celebrated here too and the way they do not seem to affect us as much they might (‘20 July 1969 AD’ and ‘Selfie’). Many poems point to truths obscured by our mythologizing of the past (‘Before the World Was Storied’) and how it is that despite being caught up in the rush of events we are constantly drawn to reflect on just what it is, and why it is, this strange experience we call ‘living’.