A remarkable first collection by an important new poet
Sean Hewitt was born in 1990. He is the author of two poetry collections, Tongues of Fire and Rapture's Road, and a memoir, All Down Darkness Wide. He collaborated with the artist Luke Edward Hall on 300,000 Kisses- Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World. Hewitt has received the Laurel Prize and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. He lectures at Trinity College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Seán Hewitt soars... His poetry will stand the test of time,
for...the sheer musicality of the language, the lightness on his
metrical feet, and his keen ear for "the music of what happens"
charm the reader into submission. This is an astonishingly assured
debut delivered in a poetic voice that has eloquence, compassion,
and serenity in equal measure...in the pantheistic tradition of
Wordsworth, Whitman, John Clare, and Seamus Heaney... When it comes
to nascent talent, we Irish have a tendency to mistake the fifth or
sixth month of pregnancy for the ninth, thrusting premature
greatness upon the liveliest embryos. By contrast, Hewitt seems to
have sprung fully formed into the literary world and, on this
showing, nothing seems beyond him.
*Sunday Times*
It is extraordinary to encounter a debut collection that feels as
established as Seán Hewitt’s… These unmediated poems are, at the
same time, charged: they pull you in swiftly, you become immersed…
In ‘Tongues of Fire’, the title piece and last in the collection,
the present is burning. It is an exceptionally moving poem –
impossible to read without a lump in the throat… He grafts the
people and circumstances of his life on to nature with unerring
brilliance… This is, above all, a devotional collection and will
lift the spirits of all who read it…. He has a gift for gravity,
rootedness, calm… Hewitt has the confidence to relax and to allow
his poems, in an unaffected and sometimes conversational way, to
speak to the heart.
*Observer *Poetry Book of the Month**
I fell into [Tongues of Fire] one morning and read the whole book
through and it truly warmed my soul. He's an exquisitely calm and
insightful lyric poet, reverential in nature and gorgeously wise in
the field of human drama. It's a stunning collection of poems.
*Irish Times *Best Books of 2020**
Very accomplished poems.
*Spectator *Books of the Year**
This is an extraordinary collection - heart-bruising, tender - one
to cherish, and live by. Though Hewitt moves us through anguish and
destruction, love still glows; and in the dark undoings of these
poems, decay lights the wildwood with its strange, ethereal
foxfire. As Hewitt writes, "it is hard to tell where heaven
starts"; I find it in these poems, which are beyond-gorgeous,
beyond-glorious, blood-felt, feral, luminous.
*Fiona Benson*
Seán Hewitt understands that poetic form is sacred and mysterious.
In these godforsaken times his reverent procedures are food for the
soul.
*Michael Longley*
I fell in love with these wild, heartsore, ecstatic poems. They
lead us to deep, hushed places - in the woods and heaths, in our
hearts and bodies - and unearth such tenderness and dark treasure.
Tongues of Fire is a beautiful book and Seán Hewitt is an
extraordinary writer.
*Liz Berry*
In Tongues of Fire, Hewitt crafts poems of intense beauty and
endless range, which glisten with queer desire... Considered and
poised, every line in this stunning compilation surprises and
nurtures.
*attitude, *Books of the Year**
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