Word Skin Poetry Book Launch

I'm delighted to launch my debut full length poetry collection, Word Skin, from Salmon Poetry. The event will take place on Sunday, 03rd December at 2 pm in Antonia's Bookstore, Trim, Co. Meath. The collection will be introduced by Boyne Writer, Michael Farry. I will read some poems from the book and sign copies. 

Word Skin can be ordered online from Salmon Poetry and they ship worldwide.

https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=600&a=373

Days of Clear Light from Salmon Poetry

A celebration of Salmon Poetry at 40, and a Festschrift in honour of Jessie Lendennie Days of Clear Light contains a foreword by President Michael D. Higgins. 

Edited by Alan Hayes and Nessa O'Mahony, it is a beautiful anthology of poetry and it can found here. Congratulations to Jessie who is so warmly appreciated in the book, and to all the wonderful Salmon poets involved. 

There's also an article in The Irish Times about Jessie which can be read here.

Massacre of the Birds, by Mary O'Donnell, Salmon Poetry 2020

In the winter garden

at full moon.

I watch the fields

turn to watered silk,

a chemise for the ghosts of me;

from Nocturnal, Mary O'Donnell

Massacre of the Birds is Mary O'Donnell's 4th poetry collection from Salmon Poetry. Reading the Sunflowers in September, Spiderwoman's Third Avenue Rhapsody and Unlegendary Heroes were all published in the 1990's. She is a novelist and The Light-Makers won The Sunday Tribune's Best New Irish Novel in 1992. She has won The William Allingham Award, The Listowel Writers’ Week Short Story Prize and The Fish International Short Story Award. Short story collections include Strong Pagans (Poolbeg, 1991), Storm Over Belfast (New Island Books, 2008), and Empire (Arlen House, 2018). She taught creative writing at Maynooth University and teaches poetry on Galway University's MA in Creative Writing. She is a member of the Irish Writers' Union, and a board member of the Irish Writers' Centre. She is a member of Aosdána. Her 2014 novel Where They Lie focuses on the 'Disappeared'. 

Hanging House in a Canal, the opening poem of Massacre of the Birds,  is dedicated to fellow writer Jean O'Brien and the collection is speckled with works in praise of, and defending women. Other poems are dedicated to Mary Guckian, Eileen Battersby, Mary O'Keefe and Bridget Flannery. It Wasn't a Woman is a list of violent crimes committed against the innocent by men and #MeToo, 12 Remembered Scenes and a Line remembers 12 incidents in which the writer was trespassed, the last line being 'I was never raped.' Finding 'Our Place' Heroic tackles the misogyny that found its way into  the drafting of the Irish constitution under De Valera. 

The plight of refugees from Syria is explored by the writer. In the beautiful The Little Waves, like Judgements, she admires the resilience of those who have found a place to stay in Sweden, they walk with dignity 'As if nothing had happened'. The poet finds a striking humility in their maintenance of an innocence, 'Their faces knowing only the future.' The displacement of the Syrian people though is like a judgement. Who is to blame? The Blackbird, God Almighty and Allah answers some of the poet's question. In the bird's song of nature she can find a peaceful faith that no organised religion can offer. 

In poems about her mother O'Donnell is sage and understanding. Travelling to see her, she ponders the nature of growing old and passing the Hill of Tara, from the motorway realises '...all that sunken ground,/what shifts beneath us/even as we live' in Mother, I am Crying. On Reading my Mother's Sorrow Diary reveals some of the inner thoughts of a mother, her unending love for her husband, her loyalty to her daughters and daily tittle-tattle. My Mother says No on Bloomsday is a reference to the power of saying 'no' and it describes a care shown in filial duty. 

From her very essence O'Donnell seeks to understand a broken and changing world. She tries to comprehend it as a voice of the Me Too movement, as a citizen of the world aghast at the refugee crisis in the Middle East, and as an observer of global warming. She is passionately involved in this life. The collection's titular poem A Husband's Lament for the Massacre of the Birds is a deeply felt lament for a destruction of the environment. This is a timely collection that deserves attention. It is current and insightful. The closing poem is as mysterious and prophetic as the closing lines of Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby. O'Donnell writes in The Future Wears a Yellow Hat that time to come 'greets us effortlessly,/waving its yellow hat/as we cross a high bridge/from opposite directions,/smiling'. Perhaps this is a calling to be more present!

Massacre of the Birds is now available here, from Salmon Poetry. The launch will take place this coming Thursday, November 12th at 7.30 pm online via zoom. Attendance can be booked here with Eventbrite.

Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor, by Anne Tannam

From Salmon Poetry Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor is Anne Tannam's second poetry collection (her third is imminent from Salmon too). A spoken word artist, Anne's work has widely featured in poetry journals in Ireland and abroad. She is an experienced and accredited creative writing coach and offers support to writers through her business Anne Tannam Creative Coaching. She is the poet in residence at this year's online Trim Poetry Festival.

Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor is a brilliant title for a collection of poetry, it immediately lures the reader into wanting to know more and it gives a sense of change in time and space. There is the notion that this will be no stagnant collection, you better buckle up and enjoy the ride. I did. I read the book from start to finish this morning in an hour and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I felt the sea on my face reflecting an array of emotions. 

The title of the collection can be found in the closing lines of the first poem 'Airborne' in which the poet smells the sea on the wind, full of the fates. In her second poem Tannam considers what it means to be 'At Sea', to be middle-aged, to wonder what the meaning of life is, 'acknowledging the sadness/of continents and planets unexplored', and other women 'who speak of emptiness and longing'. Of course life is no scripted, existing-in-itself movie scene, and the grass is always greener.

In 'Thanksgiving' which I think I published in Boyne Berries, if not it's definitely a favourite piece, the poet bounces back in typical style to praise all the wonderful things in life, 'the small things that blue our horizon'. If you think poetry doesn't matter then read this poem if you are feeling down. It is a buoy. Tannam is again sailing, giving thanks 'for our ocean crossing'. And just what seas has she crossed?

I would recommend this collection to anyone who is grief stricken and especially to someone who has recently lost a parent. The poet's mother and father are lovingly recalled. In 'Mobile Library' she recalls how her father would 'perch his large frame/at the end of my bed/pull out books/hidden in coat pockets' offering a route to a wider world of imagination comparable to flying on a magic carpet. I do love Tannam's poems about her mother, how their relationship changed over time as the child became the adult. I had to chuckle when reading 'When We Go Shopping' as I can relate very much to the scenario of shopping with my own mother. 'Testament' is an ambitious and carefully executed poem chronicling the poet's love for and understanding of, her mother, 'sometimes the word mammy simply translates as love', she states.

Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor also takes on the perspective of now being a mother to her own children. Wisely she realises that 'Your Children Are Not Your Children', they grow up and begin their own lives. In 'Listen Here Australia!' Tannam trys to make a deal with the continent to return her child in a year, it's the stuff of fairytale. 'Final Addition'  describes the birth of a son, 'and there he is/breathing us in'.

As the title suggested this was going to be a bit of a roller coaster, and I am more refreshed for the spin in knowledge of the vitality of life when we become fully aware of it, 'of open, painful, joyful living'. This is poetry at its best, reflective, examining, lyrical, primitive and joyous. Tannam leaves us with a challenge in 'Rise'.

'Dare we let go/of all the things/we lost in the fire?'

Indeed, do we dare?