Like a Tree Cut Back weaves a memoir of Michael McCarthy from his boyhood in rural Ireland – overshadowed by an incident that resulted in the death of his brother – to his journey towards priesthood and poetry.
Interspersed throughout is a brief history of Carlow College, 19th Century Catholic Ireland's answer to Trinity College, Dublin, and – as McCarthy shows – a training ground for priests, apostles and rebels.
Part history, part memoir and part meditation, this outstanding book of poetry and prose confirms Michael McCarthy as a powerful storyteller and an acute observer of the human condition.

Michael McCarthy grew up on a farm in West Cork, Ireland. His first poetry collection, Bird's Nests and Other Poems (Bradshaw Books, 2003) won the Patrick Kavanagh Award and was followed by children's books, which have been translated into seventeen languages.
At the Races (Smith|Doorstop, 2009) was the overall winner of the 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Michael Longely, while The Healing Station (Smith|Doorstop, 2015) was selected as a Book of the Year by Hilary Mantel in the Guardian.

Michael worked as a priest in North Yorkshire where he died in July 2018. The Bright Room and other poems (Smith|Doorstop, 2019) brought together poems written over the last decade of his life.