Father Myself

“Father Myself is a bright devastation of a book, a meditation on father-son love, queerness, loss, imperfection, and a man slowly becoming his own father. Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered.”

-- Joelle Taylor

“This is emotional, gut-punching stuff. McDermott's best work to date.”

-- Luke Wright

“A brave and self-exposing collection of poems that’s a moving homage to a parent that died too soon, capturing the private vocabulary of a family as well as to the love and complexities of a father-son relationship. The book is an incredible testament to the pandemic, one where boy becomes man, and where loss brings catharsis and resurrection, but also enables a celebration and affirmation of the queer self. An intelligent, compelling and heartbreaking collection that’s an elegy to covid and to everything that through all the years could never be said”

-- Paul Stephenson

“James McDermott lays bare the language of grief in this deeply moving, startlingly authentic collection. Beautifully drawn vignettes of anguish and loss usher the reader from hospital to home, domesticity to deathbed. An examination of the human condition, settings and snippets of dialogue are precise, compelling, often forensic, with imagery of flesh and decay a recurring motif: ‘I see him / in rotten apples liver pâté red steak’. Yet tenderness surfaces again and again like a soft bruise: ‘Dad’s pierced left ear lobe / I touched for the first and last time in the chapel of rest’. Ultimately courage prevails, along with hope for a kind of rebirth: ‘who will I be brave enough to be now / I don’t need your approval’. A memorable read - powerful and affecting”

-- Ian Humph