Michael
Coady's One Another is a welcome and worthy successor to
his much-loved All Souls. Poetry, prose and illustration
are integrated in a cumulative work of gravity and compassion.
The title poem is prelude to a set of variations on motifs of
community, mortality and memory, emerging from an intimately known
anchorage of place.
The writer's voice is joined by a chorale of 'overheard' communal tones,
in oral mode and various moods. The book's inclusive reach finds room
for play, as in 'Textament', or its guest versions of 'The Gift of
Tongues'.
A personal crisis deepens perspective and heralds renewal in 'The
Place of Hurt and Healing'. The human interplay of unsung lives
and destinies suffuses One Another 'in the carnal war / with time
that's always lost / but never conceded'.