Book Reviews - A selection of recently published books of Irish and Irish-American interest

Poetry
Earth Voices Whispering: An Anthology of Irish War Poetry 1914-1945, edited by Gerald Dawe, is a revolutionary collection of over three hundred poems spanning Ireland’s deep and broad history of conflict in the first half of the 20th century, from the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence to the Spanish Civil War and World Wars I and II. Featuring the voices of Ireland’s writers including Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Katharine Tynan, Eva Gore-Booth, and Thomas Kinsella, Dawe’s anthology brings together the words of writers on all sides of clashes, speaking as soldiers, dissenters, civilians and mourners left behind.    – Kara Rota
 ($22.95 / 432 pages / Blackstaff Press Ltd./Dufour Editions) 

Edited by Joan McBreen, The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets is an anthology of work by twenty-four Irish poets born in the last fifty years. All of them have published at least two books of poetry, but readers will be introduced in this collection to the voices of familiar writers and newly emerging talents alike through biographical details, poems and essays, none of which have ever before been published in anthologies and most of which are published here for the first time. There are some true gems in this eclectic and varied collection, including Margaret Galvin’s sensory narratives, Anne Fitzgerald’s snapshots bursting with life in Ireland, and Paul Perry’s surreal and personal pieces.                     – Kara Rota
($29.95 / 231 pages / Salmon Publishing Ltd./Dufour Editions)

History
Mercier Press brings readers yet another true story of murder in Ireland in Dermot Walsh’s work of nonfiction, Beneath Cannock’s Clock: The Last Man Hanged in Ireland. The historical narrative explores a criminal whose sentence will go down in infamy as the last penalty of death carried out by the state in Ireland. Beneath Cannock’s Clock follows in detail the events of November 18, 1953, when 25-year-old Michael Manning took the life of Sister Catherine Cooper, and the subsequent investigation and trial that led to Manning’s execution. Walsh uses Garda files, only recently made public, as well as interviews to construct this accurate and extremely detailed account of the events. Walsh’s style is very straightforward and the book provides a step-
by-step account with investigatory
precision and an unbiased voice. Interviews are included from the investigatory team as well as excerpts from Manning’s confession to gardaí and newspaper clippings. Walsh’s approach in this work as a researcher and historian is appropriate given the weight of Manning’s execution in the context of laws in the Republic. The death penalty was partially abolished in 1964, ten years after Manning’s execution. It was expunged from the Constitution of Ireland by a referendum in 2001.
– Tara Dougherty
($19.95 / 160 pages / Mercier Press/Dufour Editions)

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