Greek

Theo Dorgan's Greek is a vivid, sensual, technically brilliant new collection which transports the reader through time and space, history and myth, love and death. The Greek Gods and Goddesses walk again, as real as we are, in the islands of 21st century Greece in a poetry which is singingly alive to the pleasures of being here now. This is the language of ùndying'. Writing from "the childhood of the world" in Greece, Dorgan finds his identity as an islander, as a lover and as a poet made new again, with increased authority and a deep understanding of the power and alchemy of myth; sharing with us his relish of "the great slant freedom of our craft". He demonstrates also a real gift for the short lyric poem in the middle section, Ìslands', each poem here being utterly of its brief moment as "the stars come out on the life that I call mine".--Carol Ann Duffy. Praise for What This Earth Cost Us (2008) "No contemporary British writer could risk, as Dorgan does in À Charm on the Night of Your Birthday', "I light the sky above our bed for you / with seven stars of gold, ploughing / the deep for you--" though many might give their writing hand for the debunking wit with which he continues: "and that's not so hard/ when you are the sea". Such fluency between registers, as between worlds, is one of the things we most want from poetry, and this book delivers it throughout.--Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times --Book Jacket.