Night Cries

John Cassidy's poems are mostly descriptive, often portraits of people, or scenes from the natural world. Caught in sharp-edged detail, the subject is explored as the poem is shaped; the movement and imagery draw out and clarify the implicit significance of a particular situation or experience. Frequently energised by the meeting of opposites, the poems embody both hesitation and conflict in the texture of their language. Night Cries is John Cassidy's second book-length collection. It includes the poems from his Bloodaxe pamphlets Changes of Light and The Fountain, which Dick Davis in PN Review praised for their 'wary ease' - one of Cassidy's own phrases. 'His best poems are very fine: fastidiously put together but not at all dandified, engaging with reality... He often deals in placid surfaces that mask a buried violence or vitality, and he does so with meticulous and self-effacing diction.' Poetry Book Society Recommendation.