Goldcrest Falling

The goldcrest, Europe's smallest bird, is central to the varied inspiration of the poems in "Goldcrest Falling" where the bird motif acts as a bonding force. The poems celebrate rural epiphanies of the author's early childhood, and the child's eye, where the good, the bad and the daring in life are seen in microcosm. They explore musical tapestries of personal and social suffering amid some of the "snarled myths" of our times. "Whether they are reminiscences of childhood or evocations of the history-imbued Irish landscape, the poems in "Goldcrest Falling" are, above all, acts of excited language. John Ennis stirs up and releases the appetites and pulses accumulated in words. It's not surprising that music and birds weave through so many of his poems." - John Steffler