Carcanet Press - Savage Tales

Description
Author
Awards
Reviews

Winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2024
Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2023
Shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2023

Tara Bergin's third collection, Savage Tales continues to explore original territory, bringing the riddle, song and dialogue into a series of formally inventive and blackly comic sequences. Bergin's book asks us to steer our way through a chorus of exchanges and situations, as she charts the fraught course between the making of individual poems and, uneasy bedfellow of this sustained activity, an authority which is always here called into question. Dramatizing the contemporary and the classic with great wit, ingenuity and panache, Savage Tales confirms Bergin as one of the outstanding poets of our time.

Tara Bergin has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, This is Yarrow (winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry), The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes) and Savage Tales (shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize). ... read more

Awards won by Tara Bergin Winner, 2024 The Michael Hartnett Poetry Award (Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2023 The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
(Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2023 The Pigott Poetry Prize (Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year ('Bride and Moth', published in The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 The T.S. Eliot Prize (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Commended, 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Winner, 2014 Shine/Strong Poetry Award Winner, 2014 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection Short-listed, 2014 Irish Times Poetry Now Award

'Savage Tales is generous and humane and utterly compelling... Quite a lot of everything is within this extraordinary book.'
Stephen Sexton, Irish Times
'The poems, or poetic fragments, in Savage Tales seem to quiver with a strange, uncanny sense that something is always about to happen. Bergin's third collection manages to be both compelling and disturbing and yet also, somehow, filled with joy too.'
Katy Mack, The Poetry Society

'It is a book of puzzles, paradoxes, oddities and fragmented observations... these tiny stories feel sinister and unsettling'
Andy Croft, Morning Star
Praise for Tara Bergin 'Eleanor Marx forms the locus for Bergin's exploration of the range of ways in which women's lives are disrupted and destabilized... this sense of the interior bleeds across the poems.'
Ian Pople, The North, the Irish Issue
'Loss, separation and desertion are all laid out for inspection as on a laboratory table to be coolly appraised... There is nothing cosy about Tara Bargin's poetry'
Sean Sheehan, The Prism
'Bergin's rhythms draw on nursery rhymes, but beneath them is something like an unconscious longing for depth, tugging the simplicity of the sounds out of shape.'
Joanne O'Leary, The TLS

'Hers is an original voice of great power that flicks between speech and song, and between the borrowed and the wholly owned, with consummate ease.'
W.N Herbert (Chair of the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize Judging Panel)

'Contains much hidden art, paring its gothic verse with an impressive precision of feeling and deftness of technique. All killer and no filler, it is the best book in contention.'
Jeremy Noel-Tod on the 2018 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist, The Sunday Times

'Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl, wrote the first English translation of Madame Bovary, and it is Bovary's spirit that haunts these slender, allusive lyrics in many voices, all hint and subtext. The brilliant title poem concludes, with a wink, ''Nearly all of this is true''. One piece takes the form of footnotes to a missing page; it's the perfect symbol for Dublin-born Bergin's riddling second collection as a whole.'
Tristram Fane Saunders, The Daily Telegraph

Voted top of the poetry polls by Irish Times readers in the 2017 Ticket Awards 'Bergin's collection is ambitious in ideas and form. She juggles theoretical and formal concerns, slipping between jarring syntax and musical, lyrical phrases with an impressive ease that, at its best, mixes ironic detachment with authentic emotional response. This collection wrangles skilfully with allusion, fragmentary forms and the poetâs own processes of composition.'
The Scores

An Irish Times Best Book of the Year 2017 'Bergin's best poems have an atmosphere of unassuming sadness.'
The Times Best Books of the Year 2017

'The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx seems to step into the breach and breathe new, memorable ways into writing the underexplored past.'
The Poetry School

'Bergin's collection is a hall of mirrors and its reflections are comic, grotesque and extraordinary.'
John Field on the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist newsletter

'Bergin's Gothic imagination - precise, claustrophobic, yet full of vertiginous perspectives - makes her a perfect guide to these frightened, frightening times.'
New Statesman

'An exhilarating read, daring, original and very funny.'
John McAuliffe, The Irish Times
'Bergin succeeds in creating a clear voice and a dramatic situation. This is Yarrow is primarily a book of monologues, establishing voices whose skewed attitudes invite an engaged critical response from the reader. The monologues are sometimes reminiscent of Paul Durcan and at other times Sylvia Plath and they can be very cutting and funny at the expense of their speakers.'
John McAuliffe, Irish Times

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Savage Tales Tara Bergin 10% off all versions Categories: 21st Century, Bestsellers, Irish, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (208 pages) (Pub. Oct 2022) 9781800172319 £15.99 £14.39 eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Oct 2022) 9781800172326 £12.79 £11.51 Digital access available through Exact Editions To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Author Awards Reviews Winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2024 Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2023 Shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2023 Tara Bergin's third collection, Savage Tales continues to explore original territory, bringing the riddle, song and dialogue into a series of formally inventive and blackly comic sequences. Bergin's book asks us to steer our way through a chorus of exchanges and situations, as she charts the fraught course between the making of individual poems and, uneasy bedfellow of this sustained activity, an authority which is always here called into question. Dramatizing the contemporary and the classic with great wit, ingenuity and panache, Savage Tales confirms Bergin as one of the outstanding poets of our time. Tara Bergin has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, This is Yarrow (winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry), The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes) and Savage Tales (shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize). ... read more Awards won by Tara Bergin Winner, 2024 The Michael Hartnett Poetry Award (Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2023 The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry (Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2023 The Pigott Poetry Prize (Savage Tales) Short-listed, 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year ('Bride and Moth', published in The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 The T.S. Eliot Prize (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Short-listed, 2017 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Commended, 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx) Winner, 2014 Shine/Strong Poetry Award Winner, 2014 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection Short-listed, 2014 Irish Times Poetry Now Award 'Savage Tales is generous and humane and utterly compelling... Quite a lot of everything is within this extraordinary book.' Stephen Sexton, Irish Times 'The poems, or poetic fragments, in Savage Tales seem to quiver with a strange, uncanny sense that something is always about to happen. Bergin's third collection manages to be both compelling and disturbing and yet also, somehow, filled with joy too.' Katy Mack, The Poetry Society 'It is a book of puzzles, paradoxes, oddities and fragmented observations... these tiny stories feel sinister and unsettling' Andy Croft, Morning Star Praise for Tara Bergin 'Eleanor Marx forms the locus for Bergin's exploration of the range of ways in which women's lives are disrupted and destabilized... this sense of the interior bleeds across the poems.' *Ian Pople, The North, the Irish Issue* 'Loss, separation and desertion are all laid out for inspection as on a laboratory table to be coolly appraised... There is nothing cosy about Tara Bargin's poetry' Sean Sheehan, The Prism 'Bergin's rhythms draw on nursery rhymes, but beneath them is something like an unconscious longing for depth, tugging the simplicity of the sounds out of shape.' Joanne O'Leary, The TLS 'Hers is an original voice of great power that flicks between speech and song, and between the borrowed and the wholly owned, with consummate ease.' W.N Herbert (Chair of the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize Judging Panel) 'Contains much hidden art, paring its gothic verse with an impressive precision of feeling and deftness of technique. All killer and no filler, it is the best book in contention.' Jeremy Noel-Tod on the 2018 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist, The Sunday Times 'Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl, wrote the first English translation of Madame Bovary, and it is Bovary's spirit that haunts these slender, allusive lyrics in many voices, all hint and subtext. The brilliant title poem concludes, with a wink, ''Nearly all of this is true''. One piece takes the form of footnotes to a missing page; it's the perfect symbol for Dublin-born Bergin's riddling second collection as a whole.' Tristram Fane Saunders, The Daily Telegraph Voted top of the poetry polls by Irish Times readers in the 2017 Ticket Awards 'Bergin's collection is ambitious in ideas and form. She juggles theoretical and formal concerns, slipping between jarring syntax and musical, lyrical phrases with an impressive ease that, at its best, mixes ironic detachment with authentic emotional response. This collection wrangles skilfully with allusion, fragmentary forms and the poetâs own processes of composition.' The Scores An Irish Times Best Book of the Year 2017 'Bergin's best poems have an atmosphere of unassuming sadness.' The Times Best Books of the Year 2017 'The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx seems to step into the breach and breathe new, memorable ways into writing the underexplored past.' The Poetry School 'Bergin's collection is a hall of mirrors and its reflections are comic, grotesque and extraordinary.' John Field on the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist newsletter 'Bergin's Gothic imagination - precise, claustrophobic, yet full of vertiginous perspectives - makes her a perfect guide to these frightened, frightening times.' New Statesman 'An exhilarating read, daring, original and very funny.' John McAuliffe, The Irish Times 'Bergin succeeds in creating a clear voice and a dramatic situation. This is Yarrow is primarily a book of monologues, establishing voices whose skewed attitudes invite an engaged critical response from the reader. The monologues are sometimes reminiscent of Paul Durcan and at other times Sylvia Plath and they can be very cutting and funny at the expense of their speakers.' John McAuliffe, Irish Times	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
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