Séamus takes poetic journey into rural life
Jackdaws Chant The Blues is the new collection of poems from Tuam-based singer-songwriter, Séamus Ruttledge.
Séamus, who is originally from Ballina, County Mayo, is a great observer of life and has brought this gift to his new collection. He describes the poems as “a journey through mystery, mysticism and the secrets of country people”.
Jackdaws Chant The Blues celebrates rural life with evocative imagery and, at times, humour, through poems like No Flowers Please, Winter Is Nearly Done and In Times Of Change.
Séamus uses the ways of country life as a prism through which he works to explore conflict, nature and mystery. The impact of pop culture on the lives of young people is addressed through poems like Ways To Live and Bowing In The Backroom, but this collection is mainly a homage to life in rural settings.
Jackdaws Chant The Blues is a journey of discovery through changing times, as Séamus draws the reader into his world, almost as a co-creator. His observations are sharp and offer people space, like a musician uses silence between notes.
This definitive collection from Séamus aims to draw readers closer to their own lives and their worlds, with poems designed to make people think, while also supporting them within the kaleidoscope of life in rural Ireland. The language is honest and the energy sincere.
His poems document change and aspects of a rural past where nature was supreme, while the struggle to make sense of what it means to be truly human in a complex, modern world, remains at the heart of his work.
Award-winning novelist Mike McCormack describes these poems as coming “straight from a heart full of truthful songs. With grace and melody they sing us through past and present, love and loss, towards some greater understanding of who we are”.
■ Jackdaws Chant The Blues is available instore and online from Books ‘n’ More, Tuam; Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway; and Pangur Bán Bookshop, Ballina.