Kilkenny poet to launch latest collection Beyond Stillness

A true hymn to heaven and earth, Beyond Stillness is a moving, sensitive exploration of our relationship with the damaged natural world, seen up close and often in astonishing, affecting detail.

The latest collection by poet Mark Roper comprises of poems that express, often simultaneously, both wonder and grief and with his trademark precision Mark Roper’s new collection observes and sketches the world around him with an enviable lightness, even as his perspective gradually widens to include memories of his upbringing, a growing awareness of his own health and mortality.

Throughout, we hear the naturalist’s self-doubt (“If I could learn / to go without saying” – ‘River’) but this only brings us closer to both the human witness and to the greater subject of his fascination.
Roper, who lives near Piltown in South Kilkenny is greatly admired for his distinctive, sensitive depictions of the natural world.

Roper is no stranger to listening, and the silence that arrives at the end of many of these poems is one that brims with meaning, and which, with unerring judgement, he allows to ring.

Mark Roper was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1951. He moved to Ireland and has lived in Tobernabrone, Co. Kilkenny since 1982, with his partner Jane. After working in childcare for a number of years, he moved into the field of adult education, teaching literature and creative writing. A mainstay of Kilkenny’s Liberal Studies for over 30 years, he has also worked with the Open University and run courses and workshops in many different settings.

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His collections include The Hen Ark (1990), which won the 1992 Aldeburgh Prize for best first collection; The Home Fire (1998) and Whereabouts (2005). His collection A Gather of Shadow (2012) was joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2014, and was shortlisted, along with Bindweed (2018), for the IrishTimes Poetry Now Award. Even So: New & Selected Poems, was published in 2008 by Dedalus Press.

He has collaborated on three books with the photographer Paddy Dwan, and wrote the librettos for two operas composed by the late Eric Sweeney.

The launch of Beyond Stillness will take place at St Kieran's College on November 9 at 7pm.