Cry for the Hot Belly

Kerry Hardie's second collection extends the wonder, the "small deep awe" of its precursor, A Furious Place (available from Dufour). To the calm reflection of "Monaghan Solstice" and other landscapes "lit from elsewhere", she introduces (in "Exiles") a narrative sweep embracing generations and questions of nationality. Cry for the Hot Belly recognizes also the appearance of death in the author's life as a familiar vision. Her reconciliation with mortality fosters a new freedom in which she discovers a point of arrival: "I don't have to remember or hold on./ I live this now, it is deep in the life".