Update

By Dennis O'Driscoll

"O'Driscoll is a quietly exciting, subtly intelligent poet."Poetry London

"O'Driscoll's crisp, unobtrusively musical precision gets to the heart of so many subjects, large and small."The Guardian

"O'Driscoll is a real poet: his lines stay with you, and crop up unbidden in your mind as you go about your day."Poetry Ireland Review

Update, the final collection of work by the late Dennis O'Driscoll, weaves a memoir of his past into the state of the world today. The poems embark on a vivid journey through consumerism, our environment, and our fragile existence. Update is O'Driscoll's parting gift, granting a shimmering glimpse of what it truly means to be human.

Ticking the Boxes

Tick the relevant boxes
in this census form tonight
if you are still in the land
of the living at that time.
You must remain
in suspense until then.

You have all morning still.
You have all afternoon long.
One continuous hour.
A whole six minutes.
Twenty-eight precious seconds left.
Three.

Two.
One.

In which to lose your job.
Your citizenship.
Your house.
Your spouse.
Your child.
Your mind.
Your sight.
Your faith.
Your life.

Count on absolutely nothing yet.

Dennis O'Driscoll (19542012), editor of Poetry Ireland Review, was the author of ten collections of poetry as well as book of interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones. Poetry Review called O'Driscoll "one of the best-read men in the Western world."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Release date: Aug 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781619321359

Dennis O'Driscoll

Born in Thurles in 1954, Dennis O’Driscoll’s nine books of poetry include New and Selected Poems (2004), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, Reality Check (2007) and Dear Life (Winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, 2013). He was editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (2006) and Quote Poet Unquote (2008). His book, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (2008) was shortlisted for ‘Book of the Decade’ in the Irish Book Awards 2010. A further book of essays, The Outnumbered Poet, was published posthumously in 2013 and received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Dennis O’Driscoll received a Lannan Literary Award, the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He was a member of Aosdána (the Irish Association to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland), and an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by University College Dublin in 2009. He judged many major awards, including the Griffin Poetry Prizes, T.S. Eliot Prize, Cholmondeley Awards (Society of Authors) and Geoffrey Faber Award. As a reviewer he contributed to, among others, The Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Parnassus, London Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), Harvard Review and A Poetry Criticism Reader (University of Iowa Press). Dennis O’Driscoll worked for almost forty years as a civil servant in Dublin. He lived with his wife, Julie O’Callaghan, in County Kildare. He died on Christmas Eve 2012 at the age of 58.

Book preview

THE ROCKS

The rocks are determined

to spend each second well.

They calculate on a geologic

scale the time they can still

reckon on, and have no

expectation of escaping

the sun’s blowout, predicted

in a mere five billion years.

Stoically, they hold their nerve,

adapt calmly to their limited prospects,

expand or contract as each

season’s heat or cold demands.

Intent on making the best

of things, they treat each day

as though it were the last, use

their time enjoyably while they may.

They will be dust long enough.

TICKING THE BOXES

Tick the relevant boxes

in this census form tonight

if you are still in the land

of the living at that time.

You must remain

in suspense until then.

You have all morning still.

You have all afternoon long.

One continuous hour.

A whole six minutes.

Twenty-eight precious seconds left.

Three.

Two.

One.

In which to lose your job.

Your citizenship.

Your house.

Your spouse.

Your child.

Your mind.

Your sight.

Your faith.

Your life.

Count on absolutely nothing yet.

STREETWISE

Do I what?

Of course. Of course.

I know him all too well.

We keep on bumping into one another,

me and that agitated man –

semblance, soul brother –

who mutters to himself at all hours

as he roams the streets,

comfortless in his own skin,

clearly a seasoned