The clock digits and sky are the same dull rust tint.
5.30 a.m. Time to turn on phones, check damages.
Found in a Context of Destruction demonstrates a rare confidence and coherence. These formally assured and blackly funny poems chart the course of addiction and recovery, contemplating the injuries a body and mind can sustain, and what joys we find in these darker spaces in the shape of friendship, music, and community. These spare, stark poems of love and survival open windows on rarely-seen vistas, bringing us on a delirious but vividly captured journey from Ireland to Mexico.
About the Author
Tim MacGabhann’s first two novels, Call Him Mine (2019) and How to Be Nowhere (2020), are published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. His chapbook Rory Gallagher — Live! — from the Hotel of the Dead (2023) was published by Rough Trade Books in 2023. 2025 saw the publication of The Black Pool (Sceptre), a memoir of addiction and recovery, and Saints (Scratch Books), a collection of short stories.
Author photo by Quinnie Tan
Praise for Found in a Context of Destruction
“Tim MacGabhann’s poems feel both brittle and lush, mournful and life-lurching. Found in a Context of Destruction is an intimate exploration of place, migration, addiction, and the dented, red-hot forging of a self. I’m awed by this poet’s unflinching gaze – and by his craft, luxuriant and searingly precise. These extraordinary poems demand to be read out loud. They shimmer in the dark.”
“Found In A Context Of Destruction is a virtuosic debut collection that plays cat and mouse with a self in the throes of addiction and eventual recovery. While the poems chart disintegration and disorder, MacGabhann has remarkable formal control of his subject matter and a deep understanding of the poetic line.”
“The personal realities intimated in these poems would be compelling fare in themselves, but in MacGabhann’s hands are rattled for the more venturesome beast inside experience. This is a cracking debut collection from one of our most intense and exhilarating writers.”
“Tim MacGabhann’s thrilling and abrasive debut collection is an irresistible compendium of oblivions and emptiness.”
“As haunting as it is enchanting, Found in a Context of Destruction burns blue with its own potent mythology. MacGabhann has assembled a visceral collection of katabatic beauty.”
“Found in a Context of Destruction, the long-awaited debut from Tim MacGabhann, is a wild, witty and wonderful poetic odyssey ... It beautifully charts the complexities inherent in self-sabotaging behaviour and the redemptive power of love.”