If All the World and Love Were Young
Stephen Sexton
2019 • Penguin
Don’t fall straight away to writing your first idea: trouble its journey from imagination to pen. Send away that idea, that impulse, whatever has pricked or moved you. Send it outside, to the next town over; have it marry and divorce. Twice. Have it be bereaved and bewildered and storied, have someone else imagine it. Then beckon it back, costumed and masked, and barely recognisable, except for that first pang of something. Write the idea then, beyond the adverse; graceful and transformed by all that new history.
— Stephen Sexton
If All the World and Love Were Young
Stephen Sexton
2019 • Penguin
Don’t fall straight away to writing your first idea: trouble its journey from imagination to pen. Send away that idea, that impulse, whatever has pricked or moved you. Send it outside, to the next town over; have it marry and divorce. Twice. Have it be bereaved and bewildered and storied, have someone else imagine it. Then beckon it back, costumed and masked, and barely recognisable, except for that first pang of something. Write the idea then, beyond the adverse; graceful and transformed by all that new history.
— Stephen Sexton
Description
When Stephen Sexton was young, video games were a way to slip through the looking glass; to be in two places at once; to be two people at once. In these poems about the death of his mother, this
moving, otherworldly narrative takes us through the levels of Super Mario World, whose flowered
landscapes bleed into our world, and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it. His remarkable debut is a daring exploration of memory, grief and the necessity of the unreal.
On RadioMoLI
Interview with Stephen Sexton
Excerpts
Interviews
- Penguin: ‘Stephen Sexton on the Juxtaposition of Poetry and Super Mario’
- Firstpost: ‘Stephen Sexton on his Debut Collection of Poems and the Impact of Super Mario Brothers on his Life’
- World Literature Today: ‘“I’m in Sympathy that Things are Lovely But They’re Not Forever:” A Conversation With Stephen Sexton.’
- The Telegraph. ‘Super Mario World, My Mother’s Death, and Me: Stephen Sexton on Turning Video Games into Poetry.’
Prizes & Awards
Reviews
- Lily Ní Dhomhnaill, The Stinging Fly
- Chris Larkin, Wild Court
- Tom Tracey, Totally Dublin
- John Phipps, The London Magazine
- Maria Johnston, Dublin Review of Books
- David Morgan O’Connor, Rhino Magazine
- Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
- Kathryn Tann, The Manchester Review
- Jeremy Noel-Tod, The Times
- Martyn Crucefix, Martyn Crucefix Blog
- Halfman, Halfbook Blog
Audio
- The Poetry Society Podcast: Stephen Sexton and Kirsten Irving Talk Poetry and Video Games
- Arcade Attack Podcast: Stephen Sexton Interview
Video
- Jaipur Lit Fest: Stephen Sexton in Conversation with Elaine Canning
- Forward Arts Foundation: Stephen Sexton Wins the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2019
- Seamus Heaney Homeplace: Keep Going – Episode 5 Stephen Sexton
