Critically acclaimed and award-winning poet Micheal O'Siadhail's Desire is a quartet of poems which addresses the pressing global concerns of our times. He describes the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, how it spread worldwide, paralyzing our society and instilling daily fear of death, particularly in older people. Hospitals were unable to cope, restaurants and businesses were closing, workers were laid off, schools and universities taught remotely, and few weddings or funerals could take place throughout a pandemic which he sees as ultimately reflecting our relationship to the damaged environment and to climate change. The current ecological crisis is rooted in new reckless patterns of rapacity which threaten our habitat as our flawed stewardship has led to global warming, heatwaves, raging fires, and hurricanes. Still, we fail to curb our greed. Our need for comfort, convenience, and instant communication on the internet, which began as an idealistic dream of making knowledge universal, has resulted in an overconsumption that further harms our planet, a consumerism driven by algorithms and internet surveillance. It is time to regain a more modest perspective on our part in the natural world and learn again to be better forebears for the generations to come, responsible stewards of the earth we share. A greater sense of our role as humble, trusted custodians can free us for wonder and praise and allow us to re-find sources of meaning worthy of life-enhancing desires. O'Siadhail affirms with realism, imagination, and inspiring wisdom how our human desires and longings can open up ways through our unprecedented global challenges.
Micheal O'Siadhail is an internationally acclaimed poet whose works include The Five Quintets, Collected Poems, One Crimson Thread, and Testament.
Foreword Epigraph Pest Habitat Behind the Screen Desiring Epilogue
Micheal O'Siadhail is arguably our leading poet-philosopher in the English language...He brings a scholar's comprehensive intellect to his fluent meditations, but righteous anger is present also, flowing through his work, interwoven with the reverent, creative spirituality of the Hebrew Scriptures. --Martyn Halsall "Church Times" ...With the true heart of a poet, O'Siadhail has faith. Pots and pots of it for us to explore. This collection should be read especially by those of us happy to forget the dreaded plague, to file it away under 'Unpleasant Memories' even as we tend the graves of loved ones lost to Covid. O'Siadhail insists that we remember, and in the remembering, we brace ourselves and change our ways. --Anne Cunningham "Meath Chronicle"
