{"product_id":"the-mystic-and-the-pig-thief-9781907773709","title":"The Mystic and the Pig Thief","description":"The Mystic and The Pig Thief is, in part, an elegy. It is also a book about the pain of being imperfectly assimilated, a book about being torn between the culture you come from and the society you're obliged to live in; a book about being pulled both ways while belonging to neither camp. The poems cross back and forth between bleak rural isolation and claustrophobic urban squalor, in Ireland, in England and in Europe. Mystic and Pig Thief are travellers, but more than being literally itinerant, they are spiritually homeless, and this to a terrible cost. The central sequence charts their inevitable transition from nomadic life, to a scattered, so-called settled existence on working-class sink estates. They stumble and struggle, picking up scraps of tradition and folklore; flirting on the fringes of the new-age 'crusty' scene, but always marginal, peripheral, only ever truly real to each other. Although portions of the sequence take Ireland as their back-drop, The Mystic and The Pig Thief is not about Irishness, or even about \"Travellerness\" per se. It is about loss, about the fall-out from, and the strategies for, dealing with an identity in rapid dissolution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=AUTH-6596962\"\u003eFran Lock\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Salt Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/04\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 136\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.40lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.32d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781907773709\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1907773703\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBISAC Categories:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-POE\"\u003ePoetry\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-POE005020\"\u003eEuropean | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis title is not returnable\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Salt Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44706539077869,"sku":"9781907773709","price":17.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/8097\/6621\/products\/img_f0f5462d-e7b3-4b58-b547-a7a8dd1f20fe.jpg?v=1703955288","url":"https:\/\/sureshotbooks.com\/products\/the-mystic-and-the-pig-thief-9781907773709","provider":"SureShot Books Publishing LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}