Cirrus@Austlit

'the light we cannot see traverses a globe caught in the combined turmoil of the climate crisis, COVID-19 and humanitarian unrest, as seen through the eyes of a mother worried for her children's futures and an exiled daughter struggling with loss and separation from loved ones in her native Ireland. Navigating the path of these apocalyptic spheres and their devastating impacts -- including catastrophic bushfires in her adopted homeland of Australia -- the poet strives throughout this collection of award-winning poems to connect with our "one persisting challenge -- to somehow find our allied humanity." A probing reflection on the human condition, this book leans always towards "the light we cannot yet see, but know lies ahead."'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'out of emptied cups explores what it means to be human—a consciousness contained within a shell that dictates so much of what our experience of life will be.

'Including internationally award-winning and shortlisted pieces, these strongly felt poems interrogate what it means to be a woman in a world where the female body still preordains so much for the person it contains. Deliberately weaving in and out of, and cross-referencing, each other, these poems reveal multiple perspectives on the same or related narratives.

'At times unabashedly political, this book plumbs the poet’s own experiences of birth, death, loss, treatment/mistreatment and place in the world—as a woman, as an immigrant, as a parent, as a former environment journalist/author depicting the decline of our planet, as a human being questioning our treatment of others based on lines on a map and ‘so many lengths/of slick red tape’.'  (Publication summary)

Collectively these poems strive to cross the boundary between body and soul. To be filled to overflowing. Emptied. To be simultaneously half-full, half-empty. To drink deeply of this one precious cup and find meaning in the traces of what remains—“lifting our hearts/out of emptied cups/and away with them/into the heavens”.

'where the lost things go [sic] traces the experience of losing oneself through life’s most formative journeys. Fly back and forth through four decades in narratives bridging the west of Ireland and Australia – buffeted by grief, betrayal and dislocation; gliding on hope and love.

'Feel the weight of emptiness in the emigrant’s baggage; the displacement of the Nowhere people who leave but perhaps never fully arrive; the loss at returning ‘home’ to find the essence of what that means – people, places and credos – has slipped away in your absence.

'This collection is about letting go of your concept of ‘home’, moving through loss, embracing hope, and finding yourself somewhere in between.

'Are we, after all, mostly the sum of what we gain from all our losses?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.