The red dog shudders and rises and listens.
Uncertain light shines the grasses.
Wealth sits in inner rooms, staring.

These are our days . . .
                                                    — Humankind

In the Irish Times George Szirtes recognized the ‘unusual warmth’ in Kerry Hardie’s poems and their ‘great density and power of experience.’ Only This Room is her fifth collection. From the ‘headstrong ways’ of herring gulls that ‘threaten and swagger and strut’ and records of experiences in Paris and Spain to sequences attentive to the monastic life on Skellig Michael and in Kells Priory in County Kilkenny this book questions, celebrates and challenges. Ultimately it is concerned with the quiet realization that ‘there is nothing to do in the world except live in it.’

Published: 15 October 2009