Brink

"Cian Ferriter's Brink opens with its title poem and it stays on the brink of various worlds and conditions throughout. Most crucial is the brink between life and death, each of which is seen from the perspective of the other as in the great five-part sequence 'Republic' showing how death is interwoven into life. But, precarious as the brink is, the sympathetic foundation of these poems in the reality of family and immediate perception is wholly redemptive. Eastern wisdom offers images for the here and now of Ireland; the poem 'Letting Go', locates us within the Tibetan notion of 'bardo', the transitional intermediate state between life and death. Ferriter's is a world aware of Rilke's beauty and terror; Art, particularly music, offers consolation for the fragility and terror of the world in Bosnia or Afghanistan or Civil War Kerry. There are great, redemptive elegies for Shane McGowan, Sinéad O'Connor and Séamus Begley. The sympathetic basis of these poems always brings our world, like the title poem, back from the brink in this wonderfully positive book.- Bernard O'Donoghue"Spirited, vivid, deeply felt, Brink illuminates the everyday with great heart and grace, gifts us a tender sanctuary."- Enda Wyley