Congratulations to Carcanet for paying equal attention to new poets and to modern classics. The Collected H.D., Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, and Yvor Winters are all essential books, and Carcanet is doing a public service keeping them in print.
This planet, this cloudy planet, is the earth. We cannot guess how flawed and insignificant it is unless we travel, in our imaginations, to another star - to another stone-pocked sphere without atmosphere where an orderly people, curious and conciliatory, stares out across the vast and silent territory of intergalactic space, dreaming of otherness...
from 'The Clangers'
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2009 T.S. ELIOT PRIZE WINNER OF THE IRISH TIMES POETRY NOW AWARD 2010
Sinéad Morrissey's fourth collection explores fertility, pregnancy, and the landscape of early childhood in poems that are by turns tender, exuberant and unsettling. Pitched against the envious dead, these diverse narratives of birth and its consequences are rooted in literary and historical contexts - from Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation to Lewis Carroll’s Alice - that amplify her theme. Infancy is for Morrissey the rich and contested territory in which what it means to be human in a precarious world is disclosed.
From reviews of Sinéad Morrissey's The State of the Prisons:
One of the major rewards of The State of the Prisons lies in the way Morrissey makes her poetic machines work and ride: in her formal risk, not least the outrageousness and enchantment of her rhymes, but also the occasional pushed-to-the-brink line-lengths, some of which feel like walking the plank with the eye. You have to trust her. - The Guardian
It is, in short, a book of splendours. - The Irish Times
Cover photograph: Girl about to do a handstand (detail) by Roger Mayne, 1957. Cover design by StephenRaw.com.
Awards won by Sinead Morrissey:, Poetry Book Society Choice for Through the Square Window (2009) Winner of UK National Poetry Competition for the poem 'Through the Square Window' (2007) Winner of a Lannan Literary Fellowship (2007) Poetry Book Society Recommendation for The State of the Prisons (2005) Shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Commonwealth Literature Prize for The State of the Prisons (2005) Shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Prize for The State of the Prisons (2005) Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for The State of the Prisons (2005) Joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry for The State of the Prisons (2005) Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Between Here and There (2002). MaCaulay Fellowship (2002) Rupert and Eithne Strong Award for Between Here and There (2002). An Eric Gregory Award for There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996) Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry (1990)
Title Information:
Categories: 21st Century, Irish, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry ISBN-10: 1 847770 57 6 ISBN-13: 978 1 847770 57 8 Edition: 1st Format: Paperback Published: November 2009 Dimensions: 216x135mm Pages: 80pp Publisher: Carcanet Press RRP: GBP£ 9.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP£ 0.99 Price: GBP£ 8.96 Status: Available
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This planet, this cloudy planet, is the earth. 
