Swallows in December

About the Book

The 56 poems in the collection are grouped under five headings: People, Creatures, Living and Partly Living, Places and Stories.

The "People" include a bookworm who dumps his books and opts for a blonde in his old age; a suicide (why?); a dying man who puts the chance of singing above the chance of survival; a man whose self-imposed function in life is to lead out on foot every funeral cortege through his town; an old woman who plays her squeeze box at a wedding reception, unheard and unheeded; a cyclist, a beachcomber and a boy dead at eleven.

The "Creatures" include a caterpillar, a kingfisher like a piece of glass from Chartres, a cormorant who in the timeless minds of schoolboys sets world records, a stray cat and a ladybird who reminds the poet of a dancer in armour in a Greek theatre.

The "Living and Partly Living" section is about the ups and downs of life: everything from whiskey punch and sunbathing and sailing in a tall ship to loneliness and the pain of loss and a prison moon and a leper Mass.

The "Places", all in Ireland, include a horsefair at Ballabuidhe, a Station Mass in Heir Island, Kinsale before the tourists besieged it, Mayo on Garland Sunday and a country road where the black-and-white cottages play dominoes.

And the "Stories" range from a well in Peru and a silenced priest to Cuthbert the monk who vigilled with otters and the homage expected form Irish tenants by Lord Ventry for his horses.

Every human emotion is articulated: anger, despair, sadness, mirth, love, empathy, amazement, disgust, veneration, gratitude and an unbounded delight in God's creation.

If, as 'tis said, imagery is the lifeblood of poetry, these poems pulse with it.

About the Author

Jerome Kiely was born in Kinsale, Co. Cork in 1925. He taught for 17 years in Carlow and Cork. Subsequently he ministered as a priest for a total of 28 years. With C. Day Lewis adjudicating he won the Adam Prize for Poetry. His work appears in the major anthologies of Irish Verse. He has had five books published: three novels, Seven Year Island, Isle of the Blest and Heat Not a Furnace and two collections of poems, The Griffin Sings and Yesterdays of the Heart.