Parallax: And Selected Poems

Sinead Morrissey is one of the most fascinating talents in international poetry. Recently appointed Belfast's first poet laureate, she creates poems known for their combination of keen intelligence and whispered intimacy.

In Parallax, which won the 2013 T. S. Eliot Prize, Morrissey writes of what is captured, and what is lost, when houses and cityscapes, servants and saboteurs ("the different people who lived in sepia"), are arrested in time by photography (or poetry), subjected to the authority of a particular perspective. Assured and disquieting, Morrisey's poems explore the paradoxes that result when we attempt to freeze our passing experience through art.

This edition of Parallax also includes a selection of poems from Morrisey's previous collections, published for the first time in the United States. In their variety of subjects and styles they trace the evolution of a poet, showcasing the formal mastery and tenderness that define her work.

Sinead Morrissey was born in 1972 and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of five poetry collections: There Was Fire in Vancouver, Between Here and There, The State of the Prisons, Through the Square Window, and Parallax. She has been the recipient of the 2013 T. S. Eliot Prize, the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and first place in the 2007 UK National Poetry Competition. She teaches creative writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University, Belfast.