In Terry McDonagh’s Fourth Floor Flat: 44 Cantos, the reader is invited into the freewheeling mind of a writer sharing his ‘houseful of thoughts’ from his upstairs vantage point. ‘I flick through day and dark’, he tells us. With a lightness of touch underpinned by McDonagh’s deep joy in language, we become enthralled by the wide-ranging meanderings of a questing, restless imagination – Geraldine Mitchell, poet.
This is a book of wonderful craft and energy. Terry McDonagh draws on moments of keen insight and humanity and melds them in vibrant, imaginative and profound language – Austin Vaughan, Mayo County Librarian
In this relentless roller coaster of images McDonagh pulls off a brave commentary from his fourth floor flat juxtaposing the urban contemporary with the Mayo of his youth. No sacred cows are safe as the absurd and surreal are seamlessly blended allowing Hamburg and Kiltimagh to be effortlessly thrown into the same mix. McDonagh is primarily a poet of displacement and considering the flux around us today, perhaps he is the one we should be reading – Ger Reidy, poet and short story writer