"Reading Robin McNamara's Under a Mind's Staircase is like taking a journey through the human condition. McNamara masterfully conveys the idea of the unreachable: the sense of something forthcoming, acts of grasping at straws, and an eventual falling away. Achingly beautiful and expertly written, McNamara's poetry will leave you asking yourself questions about the complexities of our reality."
Elizabeth Bates.
EIC Dwelling Literary & Pushcart Prize nominee USA
"McNamara's poems teem with images from the natural world, from this world and other worlds, and from what he himself calls 'tides and seasons'. Often he is subsumed in nature: 'The lichen and moss grows/so slowly over my mind.'
There is an underlying sense of betrayal here, betrayal by old loves and critics, by the education system and even by nature itself: 'When the winds rustled through/The yellow fields of corn, /I thought of a safe place, /A place I'll return to with/grey hair and creaking bones.'
But the 'safe place' is always threatened, never quite what was promised, and there is a constant striving in the poems for inspiration. This is especially true when McNamara writes about writing itself, battling uncertainties and rejections and, in one poem, trying to conduct the muse: 'Can you shape a melody/that shows how I see you/in blue, sweetness, strumming sounds?'
There's humour too, a gentle smile in A Nun on a Bicycle, but a blacker humour in poems like It's Quite Mental Really: 'I tried to take a walk but/my Agoraphobia said/"I'm back, bitch."
Catherine Ann Cullen.
Poet In Resident at Poetry Ireland
Robin McNamara lives in Waterford City. A prolific poet, he has over 145 poems published worldwide, including work published in the USA with Starving Writers, and in the UK with Saccharine Poetry. Robin is a regular contributor to Poetry Ireland and Black Bough Poetry poetry, as well as being a guest prompter with Poetry Ireland. UCD Library have a selection of his pandemic poems in their archives as a record of poems written during this period. Robin also regularly contributes to Spillwords, where he was nominated twice for poem and author of the month. Robin was selected as Spillwords Author of the Month for April 2021. He is a former resident of Copenhagen, and he is a former journalist with Insight Magazine, Dublin. He likes dogs, football and coffee. He enjoys observing and watching nature change for inspiration in writing. Find out more about Robin's work at his web site: www.robinmcpoet.com
