Chopping Wood With T.S. Eliot

“John Walsh’s quizzical observer, in ‘pre-Troubles’ Derry, backpacking in Bavaria, or coming ‘home’ to post-Wall Berlin – whether musing on a lake-locked mansion, fulminating at the news’ excesses or recalling vanished boyhood heroes – finds much virtue in small things, value in the overlooked, validation in nature’s persistence. Engaged, like the Eliot of his title, in salvaging the poetic and the good from society’s wastelands, his wry gaze and gentle tone conjure an art, and a world, that are ethically rooted, authentic, and ultimately heartening.”
Anne-Marie Fyfe

“John Walsh’s work is brave, vibrant and immensely accessible. At its best, the writing achieves a rare transparency. There are powerful poems here where we, seamlessly, get to see the world through his eyes and are greatly enriched by the experience.”
Michael Gorman

John Walsh was born in Derry. After living in Germany for sixteen years, he now lives and writes in Connemara. He has published two collections of poetry, Johnny tell Them (Guildhall Press, 2006) and Love’s Enterprise Zone (Doire Press, 2007). He is organiser of North Beach Poetry Nights in Galway, Ireland’s leading performance poetry event, and is director of Doire Press, a small literary publisher in the west of Ireland.