An inspirational, uplifting and assured debut collection, reflecting on nature and mortality
It is extraordinary to encounter a debut collection that feels as established as Seán Hewitt’s – and not in a willed or derivative way. These unmediated poems are, at the same time, charged: they pull you in swiftly, you become immersed. Hewitt revises Wordsworth’s idea of poetry as emotion “recollected in tranquillity” with the suggestion that recollection is secondary to the present moment. I even entertained the glorious illusion that these are poems that are being written and read in the same instant. 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. Hewitt tries to make sense – all at once – of his father’s dying, the nature of divinity and what it is to be mortal.
In passing, he observes a fungus consuming a juniper, its fiery horns presenting themselves for comment, offering themselves up as biblical – as “Pentecostal flame”. Their blighted beauty ties in with his father’s cancer. Grief is here the engine that drives perception. At every point, what Hewitt sees is rinsed through by what he feels. He grafts the people and circumstances of his life on to nature with unerring brilliance and yet is, at the same time, mindful that he may be finding symbols only because he needs to find them. He acknowledges the possibility of artistic opportunism and then writes his way convincingly past it.
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