In Sight of Home - Softcover

O'Mahony, Nessa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907056076 ISBN 13: 9781907056079

Publisher: Salmon Poetry, 2010

Synopsis

O'Mahony was born in Dublin in 1964 and lives in Rathfarnham. She teaches creative writing at University College Dublin and the Open University, among other places, and works as a freelance writer and editor. She was appointed writer in residence at the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies at UCD in October 2008 and was writer in residence at the Poetry and Poetics Centre at the University of South Australia in May 2009. Her poetry has appeared in a number of Irish, UK, and North American periodicals and has been translated into several European languages. This is her third poetry collection. "The poetry is accessible. and the letters, real and invented, are compellingly vivid." Booklist

About this title

Reviews

This intriguing work uses letters from a relatively well-off family of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants to Australia as a spine around which to wrap their story, told in verse and interlaced with a contemporary story of love and ambition that parallels the immigrant saga. Fiona, a writer in Dublin, discovers the letters while helping a friend clear out a relative’s country home. They inspire her to embark upon an emigration of her own, to Wales, where she seems to find love with a proper scholar whom she encounters while researching the letters. But like Margaret, the loveless main character in the nineteenth-century letters, Fiona finally finds herself alone, not content with settling for less than the love of her dreams. The poetry is accessible if occasionally prosy, and the letters, real and invented, are compellingly vivid. O’Mahony speaks in the introduction of wanting to put a face on Irish emigration other than the conventional one of poverty and want. She also puts a face on a type of contemporary woman rarely seen so clearly in modern letters. --Patricia Monaghan

Edition details

• Publisher: Salmon Poetry
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907056076
• ISBN 13: 9781907056079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 195