In an era when the very craft of writing looks in danger of either appeasing the lowest common denominator or appealing to preset tastes determined by algorithms, Tim MacGabhann’s debut poetry collection Found in a Context of Destruction comes as a welcome corrective to easy platitudes and formulaic naval gazing.
Taking their cue from the petrol-scented polemic of Sean Bonney’s late poetics and the often difficult terrain of addiction, recovery, economic migration and epigenetic trauma, MacGabhann’s poems are like museum labels for artefacts recovered from a dead planet.
Even the book’s title poem has clear echoes of Rilke’s ‘Archaic Torso of…