Birds in November by Daragh Breen Aidan Semmens almost like reading a spell

almost like reading a spell

is built around a series of family photographs

and past selves

As readers we see that our experiences find an echo in others'

conveying sensations ‘with an economy of means that is breathtaking… her poems are not merely artefacts

Birds in November by Daragh Breen Aidan Semmens almost like reading a spellFrom the Purgatorial state of the epigraph and an opening sequence that riffs on the Navigatio Santi Brendani epic, through Novembers titular birds flitting in and out of existence, to the trawler that seems determined to find some sort of escape at the collections finale, these poems examine various ghost states on which life and death, light and dark hinge. There are also encounters with Armstrong returning from the Moon, Virginia Woolf entering its