We Are The Weather

£4.50 – £6.50

Winner of the 2021 International Book & Pamphlet Competition judged by Daljit Nagra & Pascale Petit

We are the Weather is a mature and coherent first collection by a distinctive and compelling writer. The poems present vivid and often pungent scenes of rural life in exuberant and hardworking language, with childhood and family relationships at their heart.

Read a sample.

Published February 2022

What Writers and Critics Think

  • We learn what it must feel like to be a rural child, to grow up amid the rigours of a demanding landscape with its hard-won pleasures. Occasionally we feel the power of Seamus Heaney in the way the natural world is excited through physical and sonorous language. At their best, the details are devoid of self and focus on particularising natural activity with impressive acuity.

    Daljit Nagra

  • A harsh farmstead life is conjured with words the texture of mud and straw, blood and urine. I loved the sonic dance of vowels and consonants. Words for this poet are beings to roll around in. While the brutalities and charms of farm life thresh on the page, there are also tender moments, such as ‘Unmaking His Chair’ – a lyrical eco-poem told backwards. A linguistic delight!

    Pascale Petit

Description

Listen to Jim McElroy reading ‘Pouring the Yard’ from We Are The Weather.

 

The first poem ‘Hoor’ is masterful in its use of dialect – profane, profuse and intimate. The writing about the natural world is always fresh and sometimes terrifying, as in ‘Bully’ where a boy squeezes a bullfrog to death. The sounds make me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Chewy, resonant writing. – Will Harris, The Rialto

Jim McElroy is 2021 winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing and the 2020 Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award. In 2019 he was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions, runner-up in the Bridport Poetry Award and awarded an Individual Artist Award by Arts Council NI. He has been shortlisted for the 2021 Gutter, Edwin Morgan Award, the 2020 Rialto pamphlet Award, Bridport Poetry Award, Cúirt New Writing prize, was runner-up in the Fingal Poetry Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward prizes.

Additional information

Weight 0.087 kg
Dimensions 21 × 0.5 × 14.8 cm
Publication Year

February 2022
ISBN

978-1-914914-06-5, 978-1-914914-07-2
Pages

36
Format

eBook (ePub), Pamphlet

Related products