The Overmind

Traversing an axis of Liverpool-London, and following a car accident in New York, The Overmind is an attempt to metabolise experience whilst seeing the world through the skin of a jellyfish. In lyric poems and sequences, Byrne summons his Irish and English working-class ancestry, asking questions against injustice to those in power. These poems are written through grief, illness and silence, where the author’s love for his daughter during periods of separation is powerfully connected with his own father’s dementia. Mythogeographic, linguistically adept and restlessly explorative of social and personal space, The Overmind is Byrne’s seventh full collection of poems and his most powerful work to date.