Critical praise for Ceasefire in Purgatory:
"...compulsively quotable stuff..."Shane Neilson, Arc Poetry Magazine“History is the nightmare from which I am struggling to
awake,” James Joyce wrote, and the years since he died
have been even more nightmarish, especially in his
native Ireland. In a later generation Colin Carberry
wrestles with similar demons, not only at home in Ireland
but in the wide world. His poetry with its dark and bright
imagery expresses a vision of that struggle in a
distinctive voice, Irish in its eloquent music, yet with
echoes of Canada, Mexico, and Rastafari Babylon.
The settings may be purgatorial yet they’re redeemed
by the energy and order of the verse. The imaginative force is heightened by its containment within metrical verse, including sonnets and terza rima. Redemption, the longed-for ceasefire, is achieved by hope and love...These poems are profound and moving, the real thing, poetry such as we seldom find, both lucid and mysterious."
Kildare Dobbs, O.Ont (Canada/Ireland)
"As a writer, he has a very sharp eye and an intense care for the value of the word, which of course, is not only crucial for someone who is going to write poetry, but for a translator, and for an editor. It is a rare gift."
Barry Callaghan, Exile: The Literary Quarterly/Exile Editions
"Colin Carberry is widely and rightly regarded as one of Canada’s finest young poets."Richard Greene, poet, author of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (Canada)
"As a middle-aged poet respectful of tradition, I tend to approach books by poets twenty years younger than me with great caution; trepidation, even. Experience has shown me that what I'll be getting, nine times out of ten, is bad prose with the lines broken up: little form, and no substance. Carberry's book was, therefore, a very pleasant surprise. If he keeps his eye on the poetry rather than the publicity, he has, I think, every chance of taking his place among that select minority of poets who are really worth reading and rereading."
Kieran Furey, Virtual Writer (Ireland)
"What I like most in Colin Carberry's poetry, and what most impresses me, is the quest, the constant seeking to capture the world in a phrase, the old world in the New, the new world in the Old."
Jack Harte, novelist, short-story writer (Ireland)
"...all elegant and well-wrought...''Bernard MacLaverty, novelist, short fiction writer (Ireland/U.K.)
"Colin Carberry is one of the top young poets in this country."
Sang Kim, playwright (Canada)
"Carberry's work is a freshening, an inspiration, a model of the new and the deeply traditional at once..."
A.F. Moritz, poet and critic (Canada/USA)
"There is some really high-quality poetry, mostly rhymed and metred, in this book; especially powerful is a terza rima poem called "Revenant."
Zacheriah Wells, poet and critic (Canada)
