To a Fault: Poems

by Nick Laird

Overview

Winner of the 2005 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature; winner of the 2005 Ireland Chair for Poetry Award; the only poetry book long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award.

"A confident hybrid of voices and styles…tender and brilliant."—Irish Times

Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, Nick Laird balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Dexterous, fresh, and deft, To a Fault does "more, in its range and ambition, than any other first collection…in at least the last ten years" (The Independent).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393330366
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/17/2007
Pages:	74
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Nick Laird is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, and critic. His many honors include the Eric Gregory Award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His fourth collection of poems, Feel Free, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Award. The Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast, Laird lives in London and Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

Uncommonly various, quirky and always intelligent, this poetic debut from Laird (raised in Northern Ireland, now a lawyer in London) comes on the heels of his debut novel, Utterly Monkey (Reviews, Nov. 14). Both attracted deserved plaudits in Britain; this book's verbal gifts, and its mix of city and country topics, could well do the same over here. Ulster sights and Ulster troubles play unmistakable roles in Laird's fluent lines: one poem takes place "at the mythic coast, by the kitchen stove"; another describes a man kneecapped by paramilitaries. As the book proceeds, Irish backgrounds give way to cosmopolitan vocabularies and to the concerns of any adult with a love life. Rhyming poems and other strict forms bid for quotation by all who have felt as Laird does: "Aubade," for example, begins: "Go home. I haven't slept alone/ in weeks and need to reach across/ the sheets to find not warmth but loss." As with Glyn Maxwell and Paul Muldoon (to whom he may be much compared), Laird's facility can shade over into glibness, and his slick forms can conceal their emotional cores. Just as often, though, his hints and phrases reveal a sad, uncertain, likable character. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

It's no surprise that this rapt and accomplished first collection won multitudinous awards for Irish author Laird, whose first novel, Utterly Monkey, also carried away prizes. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal