Joseph Horgan

Horgan’s work is much concerned with the experiences of so-called ordinary people, with the consequences of migration, with the notions of origin and home. In often coruscating detail Horgan challenges us to witness and engage with lives we all too often choose not to see. In both his prose and poetry Horgan operates as a custodian of those who live lives far away from the spotlight, of the everyday heroism of so-called ordinary lives. We see this, for instance, in the beautiful poem ‘Asbestos Dreams’:
   
 
Horgan’s work is haunted by migration and displacement, by how their consequences have echoed throughout generations of Irish history. In poems that are accessible but inspired, colloquial but layered with meaning; Horgan excels at providing POV shots from this often overlooked emigrant class:   
   
In this poem, entitled ‘A note to Billy Matthews’, Horgan suggests that all migrants feel not only somehow caged but also tormented by the desire for flight from the cities that enmesh them, from the adopted home sthat simultaneously offer them freedom and captivity. Each of  Horgan’s collections centres on such nomadic literary quests, on the search for ‘home’ and for our place in the world.
 
A prolific collaborator Horgan relishes the opportunity to work with artists across a range of media. He has notably collaborated with painter Brian Whelan, who produced illustrations for each of the poems in An Unscheduled Life.  This collection’s straightforward titles belie the respect, munificence and flair with which its subjects are treated by both Horgan and Whelan. These are dense and sensory pieces, works that seem to reads us as much as we read them,
 
In the deeply poignant poem ‘The immigrant’s self-portrait’ the reader is treated  another ‘point of view shot’ out from Horgan’s social conscience, as he forces us to acknowledge those who so often blur into the streetscape:
 
   
 
Horgan’s deep connection to the subjects he writes about place him among the most important of contemporary Irish poets. He functions as the eyes of the verlooked and his poems are anthemic tributes even in their apparent reticence. These are poems for the people not the flag and they sing from the page, to lodge deep in the conscience and the consciousness.
Bibliography

Poetry 

Slipping Letters Beneath the Sea, Doghouse Books, Tralee, 2008
An Unscheduled Life, Agenda Editions, East Sussex, 2012  (with Brian Whelan)
The Year I Loved England, Pighog, Brighton, 2014 (with Antony Owen)

Prose

The Song at Your Backdoor, Collins Press, Cork, 2010

Links

Review by David Cooke of An Unscheduled Life
Three poems by Horgan at Days of Roses
Selection of articles by Horgan at Irish Left Review