This, Also, Is Mercy by Teresa Godfrey

“This, Also, Is Mercy begins with a moving and wonderfully detailed poem about the Titanic. One thinks one knows where that particular journey will end up, but Teresa Godfrey’s poems are never predictable, and ‘Omen’ sets us off on a voyage into the surprising and marvellous. Before the book ends with ‘Covid Planting’ a poem that perfectly sums up 2020, we’re offered hard-hitting pieces, followed by a sequence of superb love poems and some treks through norther dreamscapes that move with cinematic deftness. There’s also a self-portrait that might not even be of the author, a little masterpiece of ekphrastic art. Energetic, caring, and wildly inventive, these are poems of a high order indeed” – Theodore Deppe

“This, Also, Is Mercy is a meditation on connections. Teresa Godfrey knows that it is details that bring meaning to moments and she describes them in elegant, musical language. The collection arcs through time, beginning with a (fortunately) failed emigration, and becomes a meditation on what stays. In times of violence, Godfrey finds domestic symbols of resilience: ‘All the women back them / kept pins for fixing, / fastening, securing, / holding their families together.’ She demands that we not avert our eyes from the world’s horrors. At the same time, she shows us the delight and beauty in knowing, through deep connection, a natural landscape ‘…so familiar . I’d never thought before to ask its name.’ Like the Enniskillen to Belfast bus, these poems will transport you” – Chryss Yost