Half-Open Door
Half-Open Door
By James Finnegan
Dublin-born James Finnegan has been highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Competition and shortlisted for Over The Edge New Writer of the Year. His work has been published in The Irish Times, North West Words, CYPHERS and the anthology Best New British & Irish Poets 2018, among others. Finnegan taught in St Eunan’s College Letterkenny and holds a doctor of philosophy in living educational theory. Married to Livinia, Finnegan lives in the countryside a few miles outside Letterkenny in Co. Donegal.
Set alongside pathways, rivers and through half-open doorways that invite active transformation, James Finnegan’s debut collection maps metaphoric journeys of quest, loss of light, faith, identity and art. These poems comment on each other and extend the metaphor of his half-open door as they traverse the today, yesterday and tomorrow of the poet’s search for the meaning hidden in his multiple selves. — Deirdre Hines
James Finnegan’s poems are doorways into stillness, where the cut and thrust of the world is forced to withdraw, and time slows to a moment lit only by the keen and considered focus of the poet’s eye. This is a stunning collection from a lyrical Irish heart, and a poet in full command and in full embrace of his art. — Dr Liam Campbell