Synopsis
After five chapbooks and ten years writing poetry, this first full collection has a wide wingspan and a sharp eye. Migrating from Dublin to Lough Gara, on the Sligo Roscommon border, the intimacies of personal life sit easily next to global themes of conflict, the environment, migration, and the universal matters of love and death. Politics – with a small p – are always just under the skin of Jessamine O’Connor’s writing, but she avoids telling the reader what to think, instead she shows by example how to feel.
“These barefaced poems don’t back down from anything or anyone. Jessamine takes her pen to the world around her and documents it in all its misshappen ugliness and all its impossible beauty. These poems don’t flinch from how much life hurts but somehow in their humour, kindness and lightness they show us how to love it anyway.”
-Sarah Clancy
With Illustrations by Helen Chantrell.
Table of Contents
Preface by Neil Young, Editor of The Poets’ Republic 8
Welcome 11
Crow’s feet 12
Backcarrier 13
Hunting in the bathroom 14
Line 16
My mother has never been old 17
Green 19
Notice 20
Balloon 27
Brothers – 7th May 1916 29
Harbour 32
This lake swallows men 33
Taidgh 35
Ten so far this morning 36
Hellsteeth 38
Militant with hope 39
Early in December 40
Watershed 42
Christmas list for my newborn girl 45
When I grow up 46
Six hours 48
Asimo – on prime time TV 49
To the Oxford University Press 51
Colony 52
The planter 54
At the seaside 55
Django in the white clover as the swallows fledge 56
Féis 58
Scan 60
Great 61
Three new fathers 62
Meet me for coffee 67
Silver spoon 68
Fusebox 70
Organic 71
Stubble 72
Too little 73
Tourists 74
Fracture 75
Dead language 77
Sea swimmer after heart surgery 78
I never hit her 79
Old woman 82
Jamie’s red yo-yo 83
In time 84
Sleepless Lough Gara 89
There was no funeral 90
Pact 91
Carraroe runaway 92
A skyful of kites 93
Snowbird 94
Watch 95
Regular 96
Morning radio 97
Fog 98
The stranger 99
One last beat 106
My house 107
Notes on poems 108
Acknowledgements 110
About the Author 113
About the Author
Jessamine O’Connor grew up in Dublin and moved to the west of Ireland in 1999 where she now lives in an old train station on the Sligo Roscommon border.
She is recipient of the Francis Ledwidge award, and winner of the iYeats and Poetry Ireland Butler’s Café competitions. Her work has been shortlisted at the Doolin Writer’s Weekend, Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, Cúirt New Writing, Red Line Book Festival, Dead Good Poetry, Westport Literary Festival and Hennessy Literary Awards.
Her short film, 'The Stranger', was shortlisted for the 2019 O’Bhéal International Poetry Film Competition. Publications include The Stinging Fly, Poetry New Zealand, The North, The Ofi Press, One, Shot Glass Journal, Abridged, Fifth Estate, The Poet’s Republic, The Cormorant, Ink Sweat & Tears and New Irish Writing; and anthologies such as Culture Matters, Yeats 150, The Colour of Saying, and Strokestown Poetry Festival Anthology. She has published several chapbooks including one with The Black Light Engine Room press. This is her first collection.
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