The One That Got Away

The One That Got Away presents readers with an eclectic mix of styles and references. It takes the reader on a journey from post-Celtic Tiger Cork to the shores of Lake Trasimeno, buzzing, like one of its many mosquitoes, between contemporary lives, imaginary events, and the historical figure of Hannibal. Often focusing on the impact of imagined events and imaginary lives, it seems haunted by the manner in which reality slips away from thought and language, but also by how we are profoundly affected by things that never happened. Drawing parallels between historically epic and minute natural agents of violence, The One that Got Away provides a sustained if tangential meditation on the post-9/11 world at home and abroad. Flitting between the mythological, the historical, the economic and the private, these poems urge us to consider deeper connections which normally evade the eye and the mind.