Reading Ovid on a transatlantic flight while registering concerns for his new-born son (‘How can we keep him from the harm this world can be . . .’), conjuring a mirage in the West of Ireland a century ago, and evoking teenage longing and lusts in recreations of ‘the morning after the night before’, Ciaran Berry’s powerfully resonant second collection focuses also on Nero’s circus in full swing and the thoughts of St Augustine, the pathologist who kept Einstein’s brain, Darwin’s expeditions and discoveries, a Japanese ghost ship adrift after a tsunami, and the ‘Beltway’ sniper attacks of 2002.

The formal thrust of Ciaran Berry’s purposeful art attests to ‘the dead still living / on the living page’ and the lives preserved in, and beyond, a museum of natural history, the ‘dead zoo’ of the book’s title. Here poems straddle the ages and the ocean between the author’s home place and a new home in America as they confirm his ‘extraordinary range and maturity…virtuosity…and originality that lies in the sustained sophistication of poetic thought.’ 

“Ciaran Berry’s The Sphere of Birds (2008) was probably the most garlanded debut of the past decade, winning the Crab Orchard, Jerwood and Michael Murphy Memorial prizes; in 2012, Berry, who grew up in Ireland but has lived in the US for several years, also received a Whiting Award. His new book, The Dead Zoo, is equally impressive.”

— John McAuliffe, The Irish Times

“And, after its intellectual heft, it’s true that the other great pleasure of The Dead Zoo is a sensual one. Its music is exquisite, long lines bearing assonantal echoes sedately and rhythmically forward. Berry’s poetry is a treat to read aloud, “a honed thing coaxed to humming”, as he suggests the human body might be when drugged up right.”

— Ailbhe Darcy, Dublin Review of Books