Description: Thomas Tyrrell's debut collection uses the rhythmic swagger of the ballad and the shanty to retell the stories of the most notorious pirates, corsairs, buccaneers, marauders and all-round bad eggs from the 'golden age' of piracy and beyond. Tyrrell illuminates their savage, surprising and little-known careers in a variety of poetic forms.
Review Quotes:
"The Poor Rogues Hang displays many of Tyrrell's virtues as a poet: his elegant manipulation of rhyme and metre; his evocative imagery, derived from a meticulous choice of words and phrases; and his keen sense of terror and the supernatural. In poems long and short, in ballads and lyrics and even a bit of drama, Tyrrell has produced a potent little gem of weird poetry that will linger in the reader's mind long after it is finished." - S. T. Joshi, scholar of Lovecraft and editor of the magazine Spectral Realms
"Thomas Tyrrell is an architect of words, carefully planning and building each poem; a master of this genre. The subject of his poetry is truly entertaining and deserves to be widely read." - John Eliot, poet, author, columnist for SWND magazine
"Thomas Tyrell is an award-winning poet and performer, but his name will be a new one to many readers. This varied collection of seafaring poems and ballads, deceptively simple and consistently gripping, should win him many new admirers." - J Andrew Taylor, author of Walking Wounded: The Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell
"This collection is far more than pirate pranks and shanties. Ghost aristocratic captains and gallows-fearing castaways weave their dark way through this clever concoction of stories, sharing the author's sense of literary adventure." - Sheila Schofield Large, poet, author, co-founder of Limousin Laureates