A remarkable first collection by an important new poetIn this collection, Sean Hewitt gives us poems of a rare musicality and grace. The collection ends with a series of elegies for the poet's father: in the face of despair, we are met with a fierce brightness, and a reclamation of the spiritual.
A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it's like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one's suffering. By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty.
For centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world has either been ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a few narratives are widely known: the wild romance of Achilles and Patroclus; the yearning love of Sappho’s lyrics; and the three genders introduced in Plato’s Symposium. Yet there is a rich literary tradition of queer Greek and Roman love that extends far beyond the prudish translations of these familiar handful of stories. In 300,000 Kisses, award-winning poet Seán Hewitt and renowned designer Luke Edward Hall collect these stories—including some of the most beautiful and moving in the classical canon—and bring them to vivid life. Alongside celebrated works by Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Catullus, they include a wide range of rarely anthologized sources: raunchy poems, thoughtful dialogues, philosophical treatises, and even a graffiti text salvaged from the ruins of Pompeii. Through Hewitt’s contemporary translations and Hall’s vibrant illustrations, we encounter relationships that are by turns heartfelt and nourishing, unrequited and lustful, toxic and crude, tender and fulfilling. A groundbreaking anthology that seeks to change the way we see the ancient world, 300,000 Kisses is a fascinating journey through love in all its forms.
This debut novel by acclaimed Irish poet Seán Hewitt explores the profound journey of sexual awakening with striking intensity. Drawing comparisons to the works of Garth Greenwell and Justin Torres, the narrative delves into themes of identity and desire, capturing the complexities of human emotions and relationships. Hewitt's lyrical prose invites readers into a deeply personal and evocative experience, making it a compelling addition to contemporary literature.
The second poetry collection from the author of All Down Darkness Wide and the winner of the 2022 Rooney Prize 'He's an exquisitely calm and insightful lyric poet' MAX PORTER, author of SHY 'Nothing seems beyond him' SUNDAY TIMES This is a haunted journey through love, loss and estrangement. 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 through 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 through 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 re-awakening.