A Dedication to Drowning by Maeve McKenna

 

From Fly on the Wall Press, A Dedication to Drowning is the debut poetry chapbook from Maeve O'Reilly McKenna. Maeve McKenna lives in rural Sligo, Ireland. In 2018, her work was shortlisted for the Red Line, and highly commended in the iYeats International Poetry competitions. In 2019, she was highly commended in the Frances Ledwidge International Poetry Award, and longlisted in the Over The Edge Poetry competition. She was joint runner-up in the Trim Poetry Competition and the Hanna Greally Poetry Competition, 2020. She was placed third in the Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition 2021 for Lemon Drops in the Pocket of My Fathers Overcoat, dedicated to her late dad who had dementia

The title poem, A Dedication to Drowning is effective, with some lovely lines such as 'your wide shoulders an Orca's/tail slicing the surface', and it finishes cleverly with a double take, launching the piece into the stratosphere. 

The prose-like Gerard's is a very human portrayal of the man behind a drug addict. Maeve perceives with an unflinching eye. There is a visceral quality to her work, where she does not shy away from the body. In the powerful Undelivered she writes 'If I could hold you, coax your chest open, blood-fill/each pulse-less chamber, lay it plump as a pillow/under mine, I would.' Cool Boiled Water is startling in imagery, 'I am trying to bend a mind' it opens, succeeded by 'Can I imagine the moon as a suffocating balloon' and, 'Or stars, the eyes of a wolf-pack,/in the dark world forest.'

There is no doubt McKenna is in touch with the primitive, the force of creation is summoned in her words. The sea is elemental to her being. I could not help hearing echoes of Virginia Woolf in Propagation -

on propagation. Oh! Hero.

Oh! Lover. Oh, desire

from consequence -

unwill me.

It is in this ecstatic vision that her verse, breaking free, soars. 

She is assured and certain in Never Tell Your Business, 'In winter, frost separated the cream,/I can't forget this.' The masculine is present as a destructive, ('Your son is trying to kill you' in The Sound of Distance) and constructive, ('And the baby, now a man,/still clapping inside the audience of a woman' in Performance) force. 

With a talent for the unexpected, and an ability to step outside herself as a writer, Maeve McKenna sees the bigger picture, bringing light to the hidden. She tackles death in A Burial in the Home, the injustice of mother and baby homes in Shadow Waiting, and gender roles in Family Web. Without doubt, her poetry carries strength and grace, along with oodles of latent passion. 

I collaborated with Maeve on work which gained publication in Beir Bua and Crow of Minerva. A Dedication to Drowning will be launched on Friday, 18th February at 7.30 pm with an introduction by poet and creative writing coach Anne Tannam. Tickets for the online launch can be found here on eventbrite.