Saturday, March 09, 2019

Salmon Poetry invites you to the launch by Ailbhe Darcy of 'Naked: New and Selected' poems by Susan Millar DuMars at the House Hotel, Spanish Parade, Galway


Salmon Poetry invites you to the launch by Ailbhe Darcy of Naked: New and Selected poems by Susan Millar DuMars at the House Hotel, Spanish Parade, Galway on Sunday, April 14th at 2pm. All welcome.
These poems were written and published over twenty five years.  There are poems from each of DuMars’ four  previous collections – Big Pink Umbrella (2008), Dreams for Breakfast (2010), The God Thing (2013), and Bone Fire (2016) – along with a generous selection of new work.  Here is demonstrated the development of a poet born in twentieth century America and now dwelling in twenty first century Ireland; a voice all the more valuable for its hybrid nature.

When she writes of bodies (her own, the bodies of women, and the body of the nation), Millar DuMars uses plain and direct speech, ideally suited to the Galway of Savita Halappanavar and “The Lost Children of Tuam”...Millar DuMars draws from a deep technical well, and from rich observational and imaginative spaces. She is possessed of great empathy. Even when the voice rises in anger, it does so to clarify, record, and instruct. Naked: New and Selected is also a book of fables, stories, and magical convergences where public and buried lives are brought out into the light.poet Eamonn Wall, author of Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame Press, 2011)

Her poetry, influenced by the directness of the American tradition, comes as a breath of fresh air...  Jessica Traynor, Poetry Ireland Review

The poetry of DuMars is known for its sensuality, which comes across in the concentration on detail...imagery we can almost taste and feel...writing that lingers in the mind long after the book has been closed.  Adele Ward, Eyewear

Susan Millar DuMars treads her own tightrope with sureness and poise while avoiding showy gestures – all prayer and no pretension. John Hudson, Markings
Ailbhe Darcy reading at this year's TS Eliot Awards
Ailbhe Darcy was born in Dublin in 1981 and brought up there. She studied for her PhD and MFA at the University of Notre Dame in the US, and taught there and at the University of Münster in Germany. She is now a lecturer in creative writing at Cardiff University. She has published her poetry in Ireland, Britain and the US. Selections of her work are included in the Bloodaxe anthologies Identity Parade and Voice Recognition, and in her pamphlet A Fictional Dress (tall-lighthouse, 2009). Imaginary Menagerie (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her first book-length collection, was shortlisted for Ireland's dlr Strong Award at Poetry Now / Mountains to Sea. A collaboration with S.J. Fowler, Subcritical Texts, was published by Gorse in 2017. Her second collection, Insistence, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2018 and is on the shortlist for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2019. Ailbhe is reading at this year's Cuirt International Festival of Literature at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway on Saturday, April 13th at 11.30am; she is also launching this year's Poem for Patience at University Hospital Galway on Friday, April 12th, 11am.