Dark Burning Rain and other poems: Volume 3

The poems in Dark Burning Rain Volume 3 are like a slap, then a scratch. The slap to get your attention, and then the scratch so it goes in deep. In other words, masochists only need apply. If that hasn’t put you off, be prepared for an otherworldly stew of the illicit, insidious and immoral, stirred up with equal portions of sublimity, divinity and equanimity. Finnegan’s poetry is not a vanity project. This is a collection of searing honesty and hard-hitting truths, served up by characters so twisted and ghastly that they make you want to look away. But look a little closer and you’ll see where the words lead - to a place, perhaps, where artifice falls away and the ugly truth is revealed. Scratches and slaps sting, and stay with us long after the injury. That is the secret weapon in this collection, which features poems dealing with living in the shadows of denial, dissecting the nature of dreams and nightmares to bring light to the darkest corners of the self. Poetry from the Feast of Fear is a five-poem series that journeys from despair following a breakup, to joy once the choice for something better crystallised. Other poems talk about the illusion of self-esteem, or even the deliberate mislabelling of self-esteem. The final work in the book, A Butterfly is Dying, takes a different tack by exploring concepts of bounty and abundance. Read more