Described by Bernard O’Donoghue as “the leading poet writing in both Irish and English”, Paddy Bushe is a committed, engaged and highly accomplished writer in Ireland’s two official languages. He is also a much admired translator from the Irish.     

In Peripheral Vision, his new collection of poems in English, he explores the relationship between seeing and vision, between the often solitary pilgrimage of the artist and the collective journey of the arts in their many expressions and forms. From the singing stone of the sculptor Imogen Stuart to the image of a piper “rooted in his chair” who nevertheless “travels deep and wide”, the transformative power of vision, belief and endeavour is felt throughout, and acts as both salve and succour against the hardships of the world, what one poem calls “this long, brutal siege of the heart”.