What This Earth Cost Us

Irish poet Theo Dorgan's first two collections, The Ordinary House of Love and Rosa Mundi, went out of print quickly; they were never republished despite widespread and ongoing demand. This book gathers in the poems from those early books, and brings them to a new and wider audience. Theo Dorgan is a poet, prose writer, editor, scriptwriter, translator and sailor. His prose account of a transatlantic voyage under sail Sailing for Home (Penguin Ireland) was praised by Doris Lessing as "a book for everyone". He is the editor and compiler of A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Penguin). He is the editor of Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh, and co-editor of Leabhar Mór na hÉireann / The Great Book of Ireland, An Leabhar Mór / The Great Book of Gaelic, the anthology Watching the River Flow and the acclaimed collection of historical essays Revising the Rising. His translations of the Slovenian poet Barbara Korun (in collaboration with the poet and Ana Jelnikar), were published as Songs of Earth and Light. He translates from the Irish and from the French and his own work has appeared in Italian (as La Casa ai Margini del Mundo) and in Spanish as La Hija de Safo. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland's academy of the arts. "I liken Theo Dorgan to a latter-day Aimhirgín, conjuring up the realities of existence out of the mists of the unconscious" -Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill "The blend of street-warrior and muse poet is extraordinarily appealing. His is an Irish urban voice which can reach far into Russia as well as into the enchanted garden of Sufi love" -John Montague