Poetry
Poetry
Poetry
Massacre of the Birds
The range of poems in Massacre of the Birds moves from an encounter with water creatures in ‘Hanging House in a Canal’ to the appearance of a satyr in O’Donnell’s back garden in ‘Muse.’ Mythic nature abounds, but wake-up calls to social denial also appear in ‘#MeToo: 12 Remembered Scenes and a Line’ and ‘It Wasn’t a Woman.’ She speaks of the endangered biosphere, of losses incurred by forced migration, but also about the attritions of time in a mother-daughter relationship. A beautiful collection from one of our most accomplished poets.
Salmon Poetry 2020
Those April Fevers
“The poems here consider history, legend, painting, science, geography, love, disappearance and recovery – “measuring the distance to/a world that tilted savagery from its cup” – with an extraordinary and persistent delicacy of phrasing, at all times drawing newness out of the routine and the taken-for-granted, whether in physical or psychic location, but nonetheless exposing complacency in often chilling terms. From “the murder of infants in temperate suburbs” to a familiar, beautiful world flooded by climate disaster and accessed only by sea life, O’Donnell articulates a mature, vital, angry, political consciousness entirely fitting as the nation reaches the centenary of its most disruptive and revolutionary moment. What an imagination this is for our day.”
Damian Smyth
Arc Publications UK, 2015
The Ark Builders
“This book is perfect if you: are a thinking woman and frustrated by feminine namby-pamby writing and chick-lit – this is the shot of espresso that you need; have always wanted to see the raw countryside of Ireland but were afraid that it is too far away and too cold; have always wanted to visit Dublin and understand it as analysed by an insider; are suffering from tourist clichés of Ireland and wonder what contemporary Irish people really think of themselves; love the delicious language of escape and wild, far-flung places; OR are sick of reading amateur poems about Nothing At All. Her poems are always about Something.”
Wena Poon, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore
Arc Publications Todmorden 2009
The Place of Miracles
New and Selected Poems
‘The Place of Miracles: New & Selected Poems is a questing, meditative work from one of Ireland’s leading poets that reaches all the way from the world of the author’s rural background to the contemporary terrain she inhabits.
“With this new and selected volume, Mary O’Donnell comes clearly into focus as an adventurous poet in search of her own objectives. Thoughtful and sensuous, sometimes dashing and vibrant, her rhythms are those of life itself. Committed to the mystery, she attends to the worldly evidence, be it childhood revelation as in the title poem, or the transforming electricity of migrant energies in the ‘Exiles’ group – this last a marker for our time. Gifted with the historical sense, like Elizabeth Bishop she combines the topical with the longer view. A poet to read and re-read.” Derek Mahon
“Mary O’Donnell’s sparkling and original poetry magically captures all of the essential aspects of life, parenthood, death, love and desolation … Her startling and witty poetry exhibits a deep-seated pleasure in the bounty of language and adeptly uncovers the mythic patterns underlying even our most private moments.” Anne Fogarty
“Writing at its purest and most powerful” The Sunday Tribune
New Island Books 2005
September Elegies
‘This elegant cadenced work shows Mary O’Donnell in mature possession of her distinctive voice and vision. In poems that seek ‘to be true to the light and dark / in each of us.’ the inner and outer search for meaning and fulfilment finds shapely utterance in the book’s gracefully structured progression through the haunted towards the consolatory and on to the elegiac and tender. The transcendent is occasionally encountered ‘(the marvellous incarnate)’ and articulated in a register that is characteristically scrupulous, sensuous and subtle. Against the clear-eyed awareness that ‘everything is borrowed’ and that love ‘rides on the brink of nothing,’ love remains the grounded act of faith that may exalt, transfigure and redeem the human experience and its mystery.’
Michael Coady
Lapwing Press 2003
Unlegendary Heroes
The poems in the first part of this collection include a journey back to Mary O’Donnell’s South Ulster border past, variations on the theme of landscape and travel, and a number of meditative visions of the rituals of love. Other poems praise the heroism and endurance of human experience, both contemporary and historic, which O’Donnell connects to themes of childhood, love and death. At the same time she undertakes her quest with a characteristic sensuousness which will delight new readers, as well as readers of her previous work.
Salmon Poetry 1998
Spiderwoman’s Third Avenue Rhapsody
Mary O’Donnell’s second poetry collection journeys through the landscapes of the physical world and the mysterious terrain of the mind. The poems are often poems of place, inspired by experiences of travel in the US, by the presence of a mysterious, magic-realism type garden, and finally by the very particular journey through pregnancy and birth.
Salmon Poetry 1993
Reading the Sunflowers in September
“Although this is a first collection, Mary O’Donnell is no neophyte . . . consequently her work gathered here has the assurance of experience. Whether speaking through an adopted persona or out of the self, her poems are characterised by an unsettling sensuousness, in which the presence of a deeply-felt world is used to disturb the complacencies of the customary. Simple activities such as dining, cycling, even the acquisition of dress-sense, become invested with plurality; a monk, islanded in the chilly detail of his scriptorium, finds in calligraphy a passion that may be devotional or diversionary . . . This is a first collection of unusual power.” –
Peter Denman
Salmon Poetry 1990
Massacre of the Birds
The range of poems in Massacre of the Birds moves from an encounter with water creatures in ‘Hanging House in a Canal’ to the appearance of a satyr in O’Donnell’s back garden in ‘Muse.’ Mythic nature abounds, but wake-up calls to social denial also appear in ‘#MeToo: 12 Remembered Scenes and a Line’ and ‘It Wasn’t a Woman.’ She speaks of the endangered biosphere, of losses incurred by forced migration, but also about the attritions of time in a mother-daughter relationship. A beautiful collection from one of our most accomplished poets.
Salmon Poetry 2020
Those April Fevers
Intergalactic, these poems travel from outer space via the moon to coffee tables at a luxuriously considered pace. In doing so they crackle with precision, dance between love and horror, curiosity and wonder. The narrators are as diverse as their subjects, their tones ranging through wry, wistful, lusty and political. There is surrealism here, a world turned upside down by climate change, newly-charged mythologies that shake what we thought we understood about the order of things, and our relationships.
Arc Publications UK, 2015
The Ark Builders
The Ark Builders, Mary O’Donnell’s fifth poetry collection, is thoughtful, sensuous and witty, combining the topical with the timeless. One of its themes is that of the ageing woman – the ‘walls’ through which she has to pass and what she might find on the other side, her relationship with her body, her sexuality, her ability to ‘keep going’ – which she explores with a refreshing candour.
‘Mary O’Donnell is the secret, unseen star of Irish writing’ – The Irish Times
Arc Publications Todmorden 2009
The Place of Miracles
New and Selected Poems
‘The Place of Miracles: New & Selected Poems is a questing, meditative work from one of Ireland’s leading poets that reaches all the way from the world of the author’s rural background to the contemporary terrain she inhabits.
“With this new and selected volume, Mary O’Donnell comes clearly into focus as an adventurous poet in search of her own objectives. Thoughtful and sensuous, sometimes dashing and vibrant, her rhythms are those of life itself. Committed to the mystery, she attends to the worldly evidence, be it childhood revelation as in the title poem, or the transforming electricity of migrant energies in the ‘Exiles’ group – this last a marker for our time. Gifted with the historical sense, like Elizabeth Bishop she combines the topical with the longer view. A poet to read and re-read.” Derek Mahon
“Mary O’Donnell’s sparkling and original poetry magically captures all of the essential aspects of life, parenthood, death, love and desolation … Her startling and witty poetry exhibits a deep-seated pleasure in the bounty of language and adeptly uncovers the mythic patterns underlying even our most private moments.” Anne Fogarty
“Writing at its purest and most powerful” The Sunday Tribune
New Island Books 2005
September Elegies
‘This elegant cadenced work shows Mary O’Donnell in mature possession of her distinctive voice and vision. In poems that seek ‘to be true to the light and dark / in each of us.’ the inner and outer search for meaning and fulfilment finds shapely utterance in the book’s gracefully structured progression through the haunted towards the consolatory and on to the elegiac and tender. The transcendent is occasionally encountered ‘(the marvellous incarnate)’ and articulated in a register that is characteristically scrupulous, sensuous and subtle. Against the clear-eyed awareness that ‘everything is borrowed’ and that love ‘rides on the brink of nothing,’ love remains the grounded act of faith that may exalt, transfigure and redeem the human experience and its mystery.’
Michael Coady
Lapwing Press 2003
Unlegendary Heroes
The poems in the first part of this collection include a journey back to Mary O’Donnell’s South Ulster border past, variations on the theme of landscape and travel, and a number of meditative visions of the rituals of love. Other poems praise the heroism and endurance of human experience, both contemporary and historic, which O’Donnell connects to themes of childhood, love and death. At the same time she undertakes her quest with a characteristic sensuousness which will delight new readers, as well as readers of her previous work.
Salmon Poetry 1998
Spiderwoman’s Third Avenue Rhapsody
Mary O’Donnell’s second poetry collection journeys through the landscapes of the physical world and the mysterious terrain of the mind. The poems are often poems of place, inspired by experiences of travel in the US, by the presence of a mysterious, magic-realism type garden, and finally by the very particular journey through pregnancy and birth.
Salmon Poetry 1993
Reading the Sunflowers in September
“Although this is a first collection, Mary O’Donnell is no neophyte . . . consequently her work gathered here has the assurance of experience. Whether speaking through an adopted persona or out of the self, her poems are characterised by an unsettling sensuousness, in which the presence of a deeply-felt world is used to disturb the complacencies of the customary. Simple activities such as dining, cycling, even the acquisition of dress-sense, become invested with plurality; a monk, islanded in the chilly detail of his scriptorium, finds in calligraphy a passion that may be devotional or diversionary . . . This is a first collection of unusual power.” –
Peter Denman