On Purpose by Nick Laird
Laird's debut collection, To a Fault (2005), signalled the arrival of a significant new talent, 'doing more, in its range and ambition,' wrote Deryn Rees-Jones in the Independent, 'than any first collection I can think of in at least the last ten years.' On Purpose confirms the promise of that first book and shows the author hitting new and yet more athletic strides. Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, On Purpose is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, The Art of War.
"'Nick Laird's To a Fault watches the weight and measure of every word with a mixture of irony and tender loving care' Observer"
Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Feel Free (2018) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize and the Derek Walcott award. 'Up Late' the title poem from his latest collection Up Late (2023) won the Forward Prize for Best Poem. He is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens' University, Belfast.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780571237388 |
| ISBN 10 | 057123738X |
| Title | On Purpose |
| Author | Nick Laird |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber |
| Year published | 2007-08-16 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Prizes | Winner of Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2008 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |