Ultraviolet

You're on a brief plateau, a diagnosis

rising with the sun, a summit

you can't come down from, snow-blind,

hypothermic in the Himalayas, and me

a new sherpa, but by the time I reach you

and I will reach you I'll be dead myself.

In Ultraviolet, time splinters, teacups explode and two young brothers wrestle in their childhood bedroom. Like a hot, quick strike of lightning, Colin McGuire illuminates the shock of losing his brother to cancer. Strange, tender, darkly ironic and infused with a bittersweet nostalgia, these poems explore family, illness, grief, splintered memory and the limits of self-help speak. Ultraviolet light is undetectable to almost all human eyes. In turn, these poems traverse the otherwise undetected moments that go on to transform us.

'At the heart of elegy is a yearning to communicate: to whistle to the dead and hear a whistle back. Colin McGuire's collection bursts with this elegiac love, it's a psychic phone call, a summoning, a casual chat, a whistle through time and space, reminding us that death cannot end the conversation.' Caroline Bird

'Ultraviolet is provocative, heartfelt, joyful and heartbreaking, memories and moments suspended in time like dust motes in sunlight.' Carrie Marshall

'Grief permeates Ultraviolet; it is a background hum that never quite fades away. But these poems are brimful of love, too. They celebrate what was and what remains. This is a vibrant collection, often surprising, always rewarding.' Malachy Tallack