Connemara Moonshine

Dynamic, vibrant poetry from one of Montana's most prolific poets, Connemara Moonshine is Mark Gibbons first full-length book with Camphorweed Press. Born and raised in Montana, of Irish heritage, Gibbons has taught high school and worked most of the physical labor jobs available to blue collar descendants determined to stay in Montana at all costs. His poetry is working class, rural, focused on family, yet at the same time speaks to universal themes and invites readers from all walks of life to join in for a listen.

"Mark Gibbons is titanically gifted. He knows the hidden secret of love is mortality. Though his work is black ass dark and often violent, it is essentially spiritual if not religious, coming from the heart of a church with no walls. Buy this book. You can't afford not to. You will find yourself in it. Connemara Moonshine is illuminated by love and light, as rich and intoxicating as the title."
-Ed Lahey, author of The Blind Horses and Still More Poems

"Sturdy as fresh-built head frames, or trestles, or 5-wire-fences, these poems--each adorned with a gritty thumbprint as its coat of arms--are the work, the labors of love and loss, of one of The Last Best Place's finest poets. Reading Connemara Moonshine time-machines me back twenty-five years to Hugo's big round oak kitchen table, Dick eager to deliver aloud a new "pistol" he'd just discovered by, say, Philip Levine. Mark Gibbons, like Hugo, teaches us how the blue-collar heart, punching in each day for another poetic triple shift, works up an honest sweat."
-Paul Zarzyski, author of Words Growing Wild--a JRP Records CD

"Here are the songs of a man's life: funny, sad, desperate yet resolute."
-David E. Thomas, author of Fossil Fuel and Buck's Last Wreck

"Poetry is the life of a place, of the people and creatures who live there. Mark Gibbons has this life living in him. It is inked onto these pieces of paper, these boiled trees. Honor it."
-Roger Dunsmore, author of Earth's Mind: Essays in Native American Literature

For ordering information go to:
http://www.razorcake.com/gorskypress/ordering/connemara.htm#
or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0972299718/ref=sr_11_1/102-7771419-7694536?ie=UTF8