Love, Sorrow and Joy

This book serves to introduce a young and talented writer to a much wider audience and to situate his work within the more exciting and radical tradition that is the Irish avant-garde. The literary impetus evident in Graham Gillespie’s writing is similar to that of the mystical writers of old, whether Irish or Continental, Christian or Jewish. The beauty of the poetic and philosophic insights explored in this book is something new and fresh in Irish writing. Whether exploring the universal questions that are doubt and hope or stretching the sinews of language in the search for true self-identity and its expression, Gillespie’s art generates a new and profound experience. As with mystics such as Jabes, he has penetrated the silent desert of his own heart; he has bravely ventured into the unknowable, the unconscious, that same place where Merton found the “lush tangle of life and death, full of danger, yet where beautiful things move, the deer, and where there is a spring of sweet water buried.