Rapture's Road: From the author of All Down Darkness Wide

Seán Hewitt's second collection, Raptures Road, is a journey through love, loss, and estrangement, exploring the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world. It leads us through what is hidden, secret, often forbidden, to a state of ecstasy and glimpses of tenderness and reawakening.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 80 pages
Publication date: 11 January 2024
Publisher: Vintage Publishing

In this remarkable second collection, Seán Hewitt embarks on a poetic journey marked by profound emotions of love, loss, and estrangement. From one of the Sunday Times 30 under 30 in Ireland, Hewitt's words resonate with a Nerudian passion and force that leaves an indelible mark. The Guardian hails him as an exquisitely calm and insightful lyric poet, while Max Porter describes him as a poet who forges his own unique path through the landscape.

As the mind wanders and takes on a spectral quality, these poems navigate their way through the landscape, creating a dream-like state where nature undergoes a regeneration and breakdown, and where the speaker's fragmented self is interrupted by a series of ghosts, memories, and encounters.

Hewitt continues to explore the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world, which he delved into in his previous collection, Tongues of Fire. In Raptures Road, he transports us into a trance-like state of hypnotic, ecstatic rapture, where everything is called into question until a union is ultimately achieved—a union with nature itself.

This collection serves as a threnody for what is lost, a dance of apocalypse and rebirth. It leads us through the hidden, secret, often forbidden realms, unveiling the mysteries that lie within. Along the way, we encounter lethal love and grief, as well as glimpses of tenderness and reawakening.

Through his poetic prowess, Seán Hewitt invites us to embark on a journey of self-discovery and exploration, offering us a glimpse into the depths of the human experience and the profound connections between the natural world and the human soul. Raptures Road is a testament to the power of poetry to transport, inspire, and awaken our senses, leaving us forever changed by the words we encounter.

Weight: 100g
Dimension: 196 x 130 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781787334274