Given Light

Michael Coady

Given Light, Michael Coady’s most moving book to date, incorporates — in his own inimitable style — poetry, prose and photographs. Increasingly alert to ‘time’s undertow’, Coady finds intimations of transcendence in the everyday. ‘Dear Afterlife’ is his account in verse of the funeral of Dennis O’Driscoll; ‘A State of Light’ is a Connemara sequence set to music by Bill Whelan, while ‘On the Eve of a Tree-felling’ is shaped by undercuts of intimate emotion.

Coady dramatically affirms ‘woman’s death-defying miracle’ of childbirth in ‘The Other Half’ and also offers the deeply affecting ‘Palestrina and Amigo Holden of The Hill’ — invoking the ghost of the Renaissance composer to attend a country music ceremony and ‘send-off’. 

Given Light is a book of memory and reimagining infused throughout with Michael Coady’s distinctive music.

978 1 91133 730 0  pb €12.95
978 1 91133 731 7  hb €18.50