
May Swim
Katie Donovan(Author)
Bloodaxe Books Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 23. May 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-1-78037-686-8 (ISBN)
Description
By turns lyrical and sardonic, this new collection from Katie Donovan is characteristically watery - candid and uncompromising in its refusal to inhabit the safer reaches of the shore. Themes of loss, widowhood and ageing co-exist with observations of her wild garden and its inhabitants, including a mangy fox she helps to survive.
Small acts of salvage are often all that is possible in the face of overwhelming odds, such as the permission given during the Covid-19 pandemic to go 2km from home. This allowed Donovan to swim at White Rock, her local beach, thus staying afloat through the fear of that brutal time and what came next - the death of her mother. In some of these new poems the comforting delusion of rescue is highlighted as a flawed but human necessity, as in the case of Ishi, the last of his tribe 'saved to be / a living exhibit in a museum'. Other poems give voice to the remorse that is the haunting of a failed rescue.
Whether writing about her hybrid car, the death of whales from ingesting plastic waste, abortion now being legal in Ireland, or the increase in demand for sex dolls, Donovan's idiosyncratic range of tone and subject continues to enthral and engage the reader thirty years after her debut collection, Watermelon Man, arrived with its 'distinguished and open language' and 'bold statements of identity' (Eavan Boland).
In 2017 Katie Donovan was awarded twenty-first O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 'for the intensity and conviction of her poetry, in recognition of the great range of both her craft and her subject matter, and in appreciation of her dedication to the witness and the vocation of the writer'.
Small acts of salvage are often all that is possible in the face of overwhelming odds, such as the permission given during the Covid-19 pandemic to go 2km from home. This allowed Donovan to swim at White Rock, her local beach, thus staying afloat through the fear of that brutal time and what came next - the death of her mother. In some of these new poems the comforting delusion of rescue is highlighted as a flawed but human necessity, as in the case of Ishi, the last of his tribe 'saved to be / a living exhibit in a museum'. Other poems give voice to the remorse that is the haunting of a failed rescue.
Whether writing about her hybrid car, the death of whales from ingesting plastic waste, abortion now being legal in Ireland, or the increase in demand for sex dolls, Donovan's idiosyncratic range of tone and subject continues to enthral and engage the reader thirty years after her debut collection, Watermelon Man, arrived with its 'distinguished and open language' and 'bold statements of identity' (Eavan Boland).
In 2017 Katie Donovan was awarded twenty-first O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 'for the intensity and conviction of her poetry, in recognition of the great range of both her craft and her subject matter, and in appreciation of her dedication to the witness and the vocation of the writer'.
Reviews / Votes
Katie Donovan's new book, Off Duty, emerged out of the illness and premature death of her partner. Donovan records the devastating impact of that illness and loss on her relationships to her young children, her extended family and partner... If Donovan's subject is compelling, her style is more jagged: buttoned-down plainness coexists with tender, naively rendered details, alongside occasional shifts to a higher and more obviously poetic register. It is a tricky combination, but... it can be surprising and effective. -- John McAuliffe * The Irish Times [on Off Duty] * Throughout the collection, Donovan's voice remains relatable, despite her extraordinary circumstance. She does not romanticise death, or the dying; nor does she make excuses for any ugliness she finds within herself. Yet in ascribing such a tapestry of thoughts and feelings to trauma, she is able to tenderly replicate her experience in all its contradictions; in both its darkness and its light. Off Duty is certainly an account of grieving, for the dead and the dying, but it's also a study of those who go on living, and who, in time, will thrive again. -- Julia O'Mahony * Dublin Review of Books [on Off Duty] * The exact capturing of powerful and often contradictory emotions, thoughts and responses in language this vivid is extraordinarily affecting: a chronicle of almost impossible times, 'both a searing tragedy and a chainlink of domestic chores'. -- Frank Startup * The School Librarian [on Off Duty] *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
133 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-686-8 (9781780376868)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Katie Donovan was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California at Berkeley. She has published six books of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books: Watermelon Man (1993), Entering the Mare (1997), Day of the Dead (2002), Rootling: New & Selected Poems (2010), Off Duty (2016) and May Swim (2024). Off Duty was shortlisted for the Irish Times-Poetry Now Award. Born in 1962, she spent her childhood on a farm in Co. Wexford before moving to Dun Laoghaire, a suburb of Dublin where she still lives. She has worked as a journalist with The Irish Times, a Creative Writing Teacher at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (in Dun Laoghaire), and currently teaches Creative Writing at NUI Maynooth. Her work has been widely anthologised, most recently in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry, edited by Peggy O'Brien, and in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley. She is the author of Irish Women Writers: Marginalised by Whom? (Raven Arts Press, 1988), and has co-edited two anthologies, Dublines (with Brendan Kennelly), published by Bloodaxe Books in 1996, and Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present (with A. Norman Jeffares and Brendan Kennelly), published by Kyle Cathie (Britain) and Gill and Macmillan (Ireland) in 1994. In 2017 she was awarded the 21st Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.
Content
11 Deluge
12 Lost Song
13 Polar Switch
14 In a Perfect World
15 Arachne's Metamorphosis
17 Wings
19 Interruption
20 The Verge
21 Stories
22 Invasive
24 Foxed
30 Midsummer Rescue
33 Detente
35 Honeycomb
37 My Fluffy Valentine
38 Recycling
39 Murder
40 Shelter
42 Needle
43 The Three Who Were Lost
44 Baby Feet
45 Home to Vote
47 Let's Go
48 Two Women, One Grave
50 The Diggers
52 Beaming
54 Snowman
55 Archaeology
57 Portrait of the Mother as a Clay Teapot
59 Undertow
60 First Aid
62 Picnic in the ICU
63 The Dragon-printed Robe
65 Walk On By
66 Signs
67 Death and Taxes
68 Midlife Crisis
70 Salad Days
71 Spain
72 This Singular Horse
74 Berkeley
75 Olive Trees, Provence
77 Rome Project
78 Shapeshifting
80 May Swim, White Rock, 2020
81 Salvage
82 Marking Time, Dalkey
83 Catching Flies
84 Bailing
85 Divination
86 Sizing Up
87 Recess
88 Dancing Queens
90 The Seal
93 Notes
95 Acknowledgements
12 Lost Song
13 Polar Switch
14 In a Perfect World
15 Arachne's Metamorphosis
17 Wings
19 Interruption
20 The Verge
21 Stories
22 Invasive
24 Foxed
30 Midsummer Rescue
33 Detente
35 Honeycomb
37 My Fluffy Valentine
38 Recycling
39 Murder
40 Shelter
42 Needle
43 The Three Who Were Lost
44 Baby Feet
45 Home to Vote
47 Let's Go
48 Two Women, One Grave
50 The Diggers
52 Beaming
54 Snowman
55 Archaeology
57 Portrait of the Mother as a Clay Teapot
59 Undertow
60 First Aid
62 Picnic in the ICU
63 The Dragon-printed Robe
65 Walk On By
66 Signs
67 Death and Taxes
68 Midlife Crisis
70 Salad Days
71 Spain
72 This Singular Horse
74 Berkeley
75 Olive Trees, Provence
77 Rome Project
78 Shapeshifting
80 May Swim, White Rock, 2020
81 Salvage
82 Marking Time, Dalkey
83 Catching Flies
84 Bailing
85 Divination
86 Sizing Up
87 Recess
88 Dancing Queens
90 The Seal
93 Notes
95 Acknowledgements