Description

In this remarkable second collection, Sean Hewitt describes a journey haunted by love, loss and estrangement – from one of the Sunday Times 30 under 30 in Ireland

‘Points to a bright future for Irish poetry’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘An exquisitely calm and insightful lyric poet’ MAX PORTER

As the mind wanders and becomes spectral, these poems forge their own unique path through the landscape. The road Hewitt takes us on is a sleepwalk into the nightwoods, a dream-state where nature is by turns regenerated and broken, and where the split self of the speaker is interrupted by a series of ghosts, memories and encounters.

Following the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world that he explored in Tongues of Fire, the poet conjures us here into a trance: a deep delirium of hypnotic, hectic rapture where everything is called into question, until a union is finally achieved – a union in nature, with nature.

A threnody for what is lost, a dance of apocalypse and rebirth, Rapture’s Road draws us through what is hidden, secret, often forbidden, to a state of ecstasy. It leads into the humid night, through lethal love and grief, and glimpses, at the end of the journey, a place of tenderness and reawakening.

Publisher Review

An exquisitely calm and insightful lyric poet, reverential in nature and gorgeously wise in the field of human drama -- Max Porter, author of Shy A writer whose work will continue to be treasured long after our lifetimes. A wonder. -- Doireann Ni Ghriofa, praise for ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE An extraordinary collection - heart-bruising, tender - one to cherish, and live by... beyond-gorgeous, beyond-glorious, blood-felt, feral, luminous -- Fiona Benson, praise for TONGUES OF FIRE Gorgeous and moving prose that excavates the deep complexities of grief, shame and love with a tenderness and lightness of touch that makes the words sing -- Andrew McMillan, praise for ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE I fell in love with these wild, heartsore, ecstatic poems... A beautiful book and Sean Hewitt is an extraordinary writer -- Liz Berry, praise for TONGUES OF FIRE The best new work of non-fiction I've read in years -- Sarah Perry, praise for ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE Intensely original... Some of the most beautiful prose I've read in years -- Alexander Chee, praise for ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE