The poet-priest tells Jonathan Tulloch how his work honours the lives of stroke and dementia patients A blackbird is singing in the garden of St Joseph the Worker, the parish church in Sherburn-in-Elmet, in North Yorkshire, as I knock at Fr Michael McCarthy’s door. My heart rises. Birds also sing from the hedge-lined lanes, humpbacked bridges, cow pastures and biblical deserts that form much of the geography of his celebrated first two poetry collections: Birds’ Nests and Other Poems (winner of the 2003 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award) and At the Races (winner of the 2007 smith|doorstop poetry competition). I’m here for the launch of his eagerly awaited third collection, The Healing Station.Poet-priest Michael McCarthy is in his ­seventies but his eye retains the glin