Tom Duddy, RIP

The weekend brought the very sad news of the death of Irish poet Tom Duddy. I'd never met Tom, but his wonderful HappenStance pamphlet The Small Hours and the ensuing full collection, The Hiding Place, were evidence of an exceptional and highly individual talent, and a sharp, incisive yet deeply compassionate intelligence.

Helena Nelson, who deserves credit for first bringing Tom's poetry to a wider audience, and Matthew Stewart have both blogged about a writer who really does deserve to be better known and more widely read, and say it all far better than I could. I'd known Tom was very ill, but the end still came as a shock - as Nell says, he was taken long before his time. 

The poems remain. I think The Small Hours is long gone, but The Hiding Place is still available, and as Matthew mentions, SoundCloud also has some recordings of Tom reading his own work, and reading it very well.