The Fever Wards

Synopsis

The Title Poem Of The Fever Wards, Which Won The Strokestown International Poetry Prize, Straddles The Border Between Memory And Dream. It Evokes The Demolition Of An Old Tb Hospital Where A Patient Watches The Wrecking Ball Bring The World Down Around Her, Reduces It To Dust. Other Poems Haunt The Edges Of The Land, Where The Sea Can Be Regenerative, A Mangrove Swamp, An Ominous Tropical Beach, Or A Sand-filled School Become Dreamscapes Where The Wind 'blows Our Words Away And Drowns Them All' Or Where A Giant Wave Might Come Rolling In. I Spent Most Of The 1980s And 1990s In And Out Of Thailand As A 'mendicant Professor' To Borrow D. J. Enright's Lovely Phrase, And The Weather Of These Poems Is Torrid, Feverish, Out Of Synch, Like Stepping Off The High Street Into The Tropical House In A Zoo Or Botanical Garden. The Defining Politics Of The Noughties Are Refracted In A Poem Set In Rome Where 'caesar's Campaign Notes Are Full Of Shock And Awe' Or Where Humpty-dumpty Lives 'in A Tower'. The Speakers In My Poems Are New Nomads, Only Partly At Home, Ranging From Country To Country But Also Making Forays Into History, 'wandering Through The Munich Ruins' Or Finding Indian Bones On Nantucket--padraig Rooney, P. [4] Of Cover. Landing Craft -- An Ordinary Morning -- The King Of Jazz -- Winkle-pickers -- Sun In An Empty Room -- The Sand School -- The Dance Of Veils -- Wire -- Doing The Graves -- The Struggle -- Rome, Night -- His Dark Companions -- Sunbeam -- The Fever Wards -- Talking Troubadour Blues -- Junks -- Aubade -- Scenes -- Gurdjieff At The Café De La Paix -- The Ordination Meal -- The Valley -- Tower, Wall -- Boy In A Blue Tarboosh -- The Carpet -- Truffle -- Mirage -- Cavafyesque -- Gold -- The Dayboys -- The Good Popes -- Remembering The Troubles -- Bunker -- Blue Clay -- Pawnee Hunkered -- Bone Bed -- The Miacomet Indian Burial Ground, Nantucket -- Iroquois -- The Snap -- The Children Of Izieu -- Here Come The Warm Earls -- Children Of September -- Mangrove -- Monkeys -- The Tow Horses -- Beginnings -- Forgive My Heart These Flutters Padraig Rooney. Poems.