STAR lights up Christmas. We journey through the collection as ‘everyday Magi’, encountering revelations, surprises and new insights. At the book’s core are The Three Kings but also The Three Queens: women who are brought forward from behind the scenes, to be seen and heard.
The poems illuminate a wide range of human experience – political power struggles; persecution and flight; the vulnerability of the innocent and of the planet – alongside celebration, wonder and friendship. And we hear some Irish, Welsh, Scots and Ulster-Scots, reflecting Angela’s engagement with our indigenous languages.
The star is an image of hope, fading and returning; sought for and found. This a poetic vision both forensic and lyrical, clear-eyed and compassionate, expressed succinctly in the poem, The Cost of Christmas: ‘violence is not what saves the world’.
PRAISE FOR STAR
“Angela Graham performs the feat of translating the festival into an urgent challenge, fraught with our contemporary problems and yet full of joy. This book, with its lovely illustrations, will be used for a very long time.”
Gwyneth Lewis, writer and inaugural National Poet of Wales
“A wonderful gathering of poems – such a lightness of touch with the old tropes, so much music and energetic imagination at work, so many new notes sounded. Not a line is predictable or a thought expected … Angela Graham refreshes the familiar. These are lyric poems of poignancy and some pain, alert to joy, the unexpected and the promise of better lives, more grace, greater love.”
Damian Smyth, Head of Literature and Drama, Arts Council of Northern Ireland
“Many of the poems highlight the extraordinary in the everyday. They spin a luminous thread through the dark end of the year … The power of this collection lies in the scope of the poet’s imagination and her ample skill to realize it on the page for the reader. The striking folkloric images by Martin Erspamer enhance the sense of human story and ongoing quest. STAR is aptly named, as Angela Graham’s collection shines a light on the core values of the nativity, deftly revealing ‘the kernel – love.’”
Ruth Carr, writer and editor
“In STAR Graham gives us fresh and vital takes on familiar themes, leading us through the Christmas season, illuminating dark corners, casting wonder in everyday imagery and moving us with her deft poetic repertoire.”
Glen Wilson, winner of Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing
