Finding Magic in the Void: Poems About Love, Grief, Family and Modern Life

In this darkly comic and tender collection, John Togher explores the strange machinery of being alive: love affairs that flicker like jazz in backstreet bars, fathers who remain in the hum of kitchens, children who turn chaos into wonder, and lonely people reaching for meaning in a world that documents everything but understands very little. Moving between surreal humour, bruised confession, social observation, grief, lust, and quiet domestic beauty, these poems find the extraordinary in the ordinary: a chipped tooth at Piccadilly, a phone call erased like dusk, rain-soaked streets in Prague, a man salting cucumbers, a child naming a snail Captain, and a whole generation wading deeper into the blue light. Restless, intimate, and at times uncomfortable, this is a collection about the search for connection in the void, and the small moments of magic that keep us from disappearing.