The Travels of Sorrow

Sorrow never travels far from home. Dermot Healy’s death in the summer of 2014 reverberated deeply and far. Yet for all the admiration his work accrued he suffered something of the fate of those who abound in talents. Was he a poet? A novelist? A story writer? A memoirist? A playwright? He was all these — and more. When Seamus Heaney was editing Soundings (1974) Dermot Healy ‘sent a pile of material that was sprouting talent in all directions . . . he was the exception’. Four books of poems have already touched and tickled readers in surprising ways. Like all his writing they are marked by insight, empathy and wit. Ordinary acts and exchanges become luminous, even transcendent. The Travels of Sorrow is a windfall, the last gift of a compelling, original and charismatic artist.