Tongues of Fire and Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt

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I am not sure why it has taken a while for me to read Seán Hewitt 2020 debut collection Tongues of Fire, and then in the same week I also read 2024 collection Rapture’s Road.

How rich these poems are, full of images of nature, the delight in the beauty of creation. We might feel that writing about trees and flowers would be twee – but there is none of that here.

Some poems touch on events that Seán shares in All Down Darkness Wide and having the extra context from that added to the power of those poems.

From Tongues of Fire I put tabs in:

Leaf – which gave me echoes of Philip Larkin’s The Trees

Dormancy

Wild Garlic

Tongues of Fire – which concludes “… | asking over and over | | for correlation – that when all is done, | and we are laid down in the earth, we might | listen, and hear love spoken back to us.”

From Rapture’s Road I put tabs in:

So I step inside

Go to the lamplight

We Didn’t Mean to Kill Mr Flynn

Two Apparitions