To Ring in Silence

PADDY BUSHE was born in Dublin in 1948 and now lives in Waterville, Co. Kerry. A prize-winning poet both in Irish and in English, his collections include Poems With Amergin (1989), Teanga (1990), Counsellor (1991), Digging Towards The Light (1994), In Ainneoin na gCloch (2001), Hopkins on Skellig Michael (2001) and, most recently, The Nitpicking of Cranes (2004). The recipient of the Oireachtas prize for poetry in 2006, he was also the recipient of the 2006 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award. To Ring in Silence: New and Selected Poems gathers work from all of his previous publications, and, as Bernard O'Donoghue suggests in his Introduction, shows Bushe to have assumed Hartnett's mantle as "the leading poet writing in both Irish and English . This book does a magnificent service to Irish literature and the Irish language, by showing them to be anything but parochial. Its humanism reaches out to all times and cultures and places. We should take note. And it is something of a miracle that a work which is so instructive and thought-provoking is at the same time so riveting and enjoyable."