Brother of a Company

PJ Magee's collection reflects the interior monologue of the migrant worker, from youth to age, from Ireland to Canada and finally to England. These poems, conversations with the self uprooted from a former life, seek to grasp shifting cultural and emotional landscapes. Dates of composition accompany each poem to fix biographical relevance. Loss, love, family, age and mortality are among themes weighed and contemplated in poems embodying a muscular expressiveness. Born in Co. Tyrone in 1941, the author served in the RCAF where he learnt to play poker. Factory and building work ensued, then an exhibition in English at Oxford where he realised fine words and nice girls were not sinful. There followed work in the Northern Ireland civil service during the troubles, in the New Towns programme in Peterborough and in the courts service in Cambridge. PJ Magee's poetry has appeared in journals and magazines in Ireland and England.