New poetry: Life-affirming words from beyond the grave
Poetry: Posthumous collection by Matthew Sweeney; new works by Paula Meehan and Alan Gillis

Matthew Sweeney: Defiantly reloading his chief weapons: food and music. Photograph: Bloodaxe Books
Golly, a nice man wants to put a tube
into my stomach, and his colleagues
are pleading with me to simply let him. (The Tube)
The words lift off the page, as powerful as Keats’s “living hand” – but this voice from the grave has no self-pity: