Cirrus@Austlit

''It struck me at some point when reading Maurice Whelan's Thought: The Invisible Essence that thinking, a bit like reading, writing and dreaming, is not framed often enough as conversation. As readers, when we're lucky, we enter into dialogue with the writer, and when fruitful, the conversation continues long after the book is finished. This poetic and meditative book offers an unhurried, deep analytic conversation with Maurice, as he wanders through the question of what it is to have a mind and to use it.' - Charlie Stansfield 

'Maurice Whelan, psychoanalyst, poet, novelist, non-fiction writer, travels down many paths and asks the reader to travel with him. The places he offers are real and imagined: William Hazlitt's English countryside, John McGahern's Ireland's lanes and hedgerows; Shakespeare's island in The Tempest, Richard Dyer's poetic kingdom of the mind. And more. All places become spaces to the extent we are willing to explore them. Some journeys are not easy. Whelan uses his knowledge of Irish history, of the internal workings of the Catholic church and his lifetime experiences as a social worker and psychoanalyst, to interrogate the scandal of clerical child sexual abuse. He highlights an abject failure to think about the damage done to children, to their minds, hearts and souls. While content to wander, Whelan has the real business of living in his sights. He sees an appreciation of the essence of thought as necessary to maintain and improve the living of any life.'  (Publication summary)

''In 'Mount Cargill', a poem in Maurice Whelan's book Excalibur's Return, he described running up Mount Cargill in New Zealand with Richard O'Neill-Dean, to whom that volume was dedicated. Richard responded to Maurice's latest collection, Spirit Eyes, with a poem of his own, after discussing how Maurice sets about crafting a poem and the importance he attaches to a central thought or idea upon which the poem is constructed. Shipwright for Maurice Whelan, poet He might look out the odd plank, let it season slowly, covered from the rain, so that frames, ribs, stringers, in the imagination, slowly form, the particular twist or warp or grain of a thought favouring the idea of a hull, sensitive to wind and wave, to keep out storms, to manage strains. But, beyond all, the keelson, massive, strong, it must permit of no bend, take long keel-bolts, going down through heartwood, to fasten the lead weight of a real thought, many tons, to keep a good poem upright, and carrying on, tied in tight, to bind all between the sweet lines of its stem and stern, to make a fine entry, to set its wake upon the oceans of the mind. ' (Publication abstract)

'A Season and a Time has poems that are snapshots and poems that read like short stories. They scan Ireland's green fields and Australia's ochre earth. Inspiration comes from a snowdrop, a telephone call, a broken musical instrument, a night spent in sub-zero temperatures in the Snowy Mountains. The subject matter ranges from activities that inspire, through the everyday, to behaviour that degrades. The title of this collection and the title poem, 'A Season and a Time', were inspired by the book of Ecclesiastes - 'There is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.' 'Words', William Hazlitt said, 'are the only things that last forever.' Words, simply repeated, can become repetitious. New poems renew words.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.