Hail! Madam Jazz: New & Selected Poems

Hail! Madam Jazz includes Micheal O'Siadhail's new collection, The Middle Voice, the whole of his acclaimed recent sequence The Chosen Garden, and selections from five other books written over the past 16 years. They resonate with a jazz-like vitality, both light and dark, familiar themes with improvisations, varied rhythms, the simplicity of one melody with subtle interweavings of complexities. They sound out nature, childhood and growing up, passionate desire and ideals, the fragilities and abandon of life's dance. Classic models, such as the sonnet, cross with free form. Frank Delaney described him in The Listener as 'the freshest talent from Ireland'.