The second collection from a poet who offers ‘a shift in poetry, a cracking open of new possibilities’ (Irish Times)

stay winter: light the torch
in dark where life is forged

in the belly; draw breath –
draw rein

Partly inspired by a blacksmith’s apprenticeship, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe has wrought a range of gleaming elements into the poems of Stay Winter. The figure of the horse recurs: we encounter the twin steeds of the warrior Cúchulainn as well as the champion Thoroughbred Red Rum. Both Celtic Brigid and Greek Hephaestus appear as gods of the forge. Amid a powerful Irish literary heritage including Yeats, Joyce and Heaney are painterly translations of Neruda and Lorca. Stay Winter captures the ‘thing of beauty’ and the ‘dark thing’ as the poet confronts the shadow aspects of the self. It conjures a compelling wintry realm in which love is made and remade anew.