Sparks among the Stubble, John Weir’s first collection of poems since 1983, offers glimpses of the incompleteness of life and the fallibility of our endeavours in terms of family relationships, of events in society at large, of the lives of particular writers, and of our progression towards death. One of its key themes being that as a result of effort and tribulation people of every time and place may come to shine like sparks among the stubble. Such insights are perhaps attributable to John Weir’s vocation as a priest as well as a poet. “There is a telling moment in Sparks among the Stubble when the poet recalls how, at war’s end, a trench dug at the edge of his school’s playground was converted into a garden. He remembers lavender and a flower known as ‘Johnny Jump Up’. Harking back to the beginning of a century that perfected trench warfare, the flower’s name strikes a solemn note. Yet John Weir’s gift as a poet is to step beyond the past and wholeheartedly embrace the present. He loses himself in the writing of others; he bathes in coastal weather; he is alive and ‘still astonished’. He jumps up.” ––Gregory O’Brien