Nessa O’Mahony’s fifth volume of poetry explores many of her signature themes developed over a 20-year period. She writes with renewed urgency about life and love, continues her preoccupation with history (the hidden and overt), questions cultural identity and demonstrates her keen affinity with nature and landscape as well as exploring the liminal areas between loss and gain. At the heart of this new collection is a central sequence, the Hollow Woman poems, that explore O’Mahony’s recent scrape with ovarian cancer, an experience that provoked profound questions about the essence of womanhood and female identity when faced with existential threat. But more than this is O’Mahony’s enduring exploration of the human condition in a poetic voice that is quiet, subtle and occasionally devastating.
I
Bogeyman 11
A Vertebra in Slow Time 12
Simple Arithmatic of the Human Egg 13
Folk Memory 14
O’Leary’s Grave 15
Age Shall Not Weary Them 16
From a Beachcomber’s Manual 17
Absence 18
‘And the soul creeps out of the tree’ … 19
Sniper Alley 20
Mrs Pass If You Can 21
Do Not Ask 22
A Poppy for Aoife 23
April Hawthorn 24
The Hare on the Chest 25
II
The Hollow Woman Waits 29
The Hollow Woman on the Island 31
The Hollow Woman at Bohea 32
The Hollow Woman Reflects on the Illusion of Abundance 33
III
“In Ainm Croim” 37
Mantra 38
First Christmas 40
At Masada 41
Holy Land 42
Cross-Channel Auntie 44
Epithalamium 45
The King of Britain’s Daughter 46
Super Moon on the M6 47
Morning on Montpelier 48
Air Accident, Brookwood 49
Two Encounters with the Lutra Lutra 50
Timoleague 52
Bolus Head Sonata 53
Lady Chapel 54
Alcmene’s Dream 56
The Myth Kitty 57
Orphan 58
Diaspora 59
Writer’s Retreat 60
To My Dear Biographer 61
Brown Veneer Benches 62
Opening at the Centre Culturelle 63
Mollie Remembers It Well 64
Bloomsday 2004 65
If Homer Came to Iveragh … 66
Acknowledgments 68
About the Author 71
