In tight, compact words that resemble an unravelling DNA code of life, poet Robert Flanagan contemplates mortality in his latest collection, Giant Sky of The Shepherds. Flanagan's poetry is essential, incantatory, and almost shamanistic in its ability to cast spells that transport the reader to invaluable inner worlds.
Man limping./ Head tender./ Shadow on cement.
Flanagan’s verse oscillates between the breathless and the unsayable – yet somehow manages to communicate its intentions nevertheless. It is poetry that should not have been possible but was forced into birth by sometimes skillful, sometimes ruthless, always subtle Caesarean incisions.
Andreas Schroeder
As with any object in which an enormous amount of energy is packed into an almost intolerable limited space, explosion is always a possibility, or a threat. Flanagan penetrates his own or our condition like a spy or shape-changer, investigating with a view to demolition.
Margaret Atwood