The Sun is Open sifts through a boxed archive of public and private materials related to the life and death of the author's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their Belfast home in 1984.
Moving between child and adult voices, past and present, this startlingly innovative debut attempts to decode the fragments left behind and, with them, piece together a history and a life.
***
***
(@PennedintheM, 15 September 2021, e-book, 128 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveInc)
***
***
I really enjoyed The Sun Is Open. This is a powerful collection of deeply personal poetry. The poems all deal with the same subject matter, the life of the author's father and his murder by the IRA. A brief newspaper clipping about his death opens this powerful book so you know the book is going to be heart-wrenching. I liked the style of the poems which was quite unique. They did not have titles and many of them had no punctuation, made up of a series of images, impressions and memories. This was very effective. I felt humbled by this collection.
