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list price: $15.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Sep 2003
ISBN:9780889224780
publisher: Talonbooks

The Singer's Broken Throat

by Des Walsh

tagged: canadian
Description

The Singer’s Broken Throat is a collection of poems that trace a path through both physical and emotional landscapes; each step of the narrative way is marked by an event of the heart; each image is a map of person and place. Des Walsh’s fourth book of poetry echoes his extensive film and theatre work: the voices here are always dramatic and present, not passive and absent, even when the poems are elegiac in form and substance, even when their subject is historic. These poems disclose the fragility and wonderment of relationships, as well as remind us that we are all alive to each other, inextricable from our frames in both time and space.

Walsh’s ancestors, who crossed the cold grey Atlantic from the rock of Ireland to the rock of Newfoundland, clamour to be seen and heard by the living in these poems, to remain visible in the fabric created by the often frozen, often trembling, often grasping, sometimes gentle hands of the living.

There is no attempt to create an artificially poetic voice here; there is no attempt to impose an exclusivity of language, purged of things unpoetic. These poems tell the truth, unabashedly, mystically and sometimes in a way that is violently Catholic. That in itself is reason to celebrate.

About the Author
Des Walsh was born in St. John's and first published in 1972. Since then, he has published four books of poetry. His work for the stage includes Fishwharf and Steamboat Men (Resource Centre for the Arts, LSPU Hall), Tomorrow Will Be Sunday (Rising Tide Theatre, Arts and Culture Centre), The Songs of Weather, Garland House, Play Somethin' We All Knows and Johnny August (Rising Tide Theatre, Summer in the Bight Theatre Festival). In November 1997, he was Playwright-in-Residence at Playwright's Workshop Montreal. He co-wrote the TV drama The Boys of St. Vincent for which he won several awards including a Gemini in Canada and the Umbriafiction award in Italy. His eight-hour TV adaptation of Bernice Morgan's novel Random Passage aired on CBC in January 2002.
Contributor Notes

Des Walsh
Desmond Walsh is a veritable cultural icon in Newfoundland, with six books of poetry published, including the acclaimed Love and Savagery, which was adapted for a motion picture by Morag Films in 2009. Talonbooks released a second edition of Love and Savagery concurrent with the film’s release. Walsh is also a noted screenwriter, playwright and musician, who co-wrote the intensely popular and critically acclaimed miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent.

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