Pure FilthPure Filth, Aidan Mathews extraordinary fifth collection of poems, forged during a pandemic, finds clarity through the cheerfulness of paradox. In sickness and in health, for better and for worse, these sixty seven verses invite us to cherish imperfection as our only pure and possible ecosystem. As finite creatures, he holds, we must choose our infinitives with care. Making do is always the aim in this world, but muddling through is often the outcome.

won Book of the Year 1996 at the prestigious Listowel Writers’ Week

others appeared as small prints in Ireland Observed (1980)

raised foc's'les and the particularity of certain words - all glide before his mind

and the Ulster leader Edward Carson

and pots of gold that are just beyond the reach of those trying to capture them

Their intertwined lives reach a symmetry seldom found in the haphazard progression of events

a modern morality tale in which strong principles

The streetscapes and skylines of Irish towns and countryside are often punctuated by a stone castle or pointed church spires

An Irish Times Most Anticipated Book of 2023

Trinity College and Radió Telefís Éireann – should have decided to honour the 1969 Nobel prize-winner by staging all of his dramatic productions over three weeks during October 1991 and hosting a series of visual displays

Land and Learning: Two Irish Clubs (1993)

she resigns herself to the man her son has become