What's in Store

WHAT'S IN STORE was Trevor Joyce's first full-length book following the publication of his collected earlier poems, with the first dream of the fire they hunt the cold (2001). For this volume, the author shaped eight years' worth of work - individual poems, extended sequences, translations from the Irish, Chinese, and other languages - into a continuous book-length structure. These poems find Joyce reaching out towards a jarringly wide range of styles and voices, from the tart lyricism of his workings of European folksongs to the ferociously dense collage/inscription of 'STILLSMAN.' Brought together as a book, the poems take on further meanings: WHAT'S IN STORE is at once a Borgesian guide to the history, customs and scientific discourse of an unknown country, and an Oulipian textual machine, whose workings by turns terrify and exalt. "This is one of my favorite poets anywhere. His poems have the clear, austere and impersonal ring of great translations. They are archetypal, they are strange" -Fanny Howe. "In a language of chiselled lucidity and deceptive simplicity, Joyce steps through a dazzling range of forms and discursive modes, from translations of folk poetry to the languages of bureaucracy and cult. And through it all, the lyric swerve and shear persists and sings. What's in Store demonstrates conclusively what many have long known: Trevor Joyce is one of a small handful of really significant poets writing from Ireland today." -David Lloyd