'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”.
'This collection of poems is charged with electric musicality, full like a glass at a wedding or a wake – and the cover equates the human being, arms extended, with a chalice which evokes the human spirit itself. The elixir this work contains is spiked with anger and despair, but it also shimmers with exuberance, and the draught it offers is addictive. Anne Casey’s work opens up issues of war, of degradation, of disrespect, covetousness and harassment, which drain us of hope, and dignity. She shows that the compulsive reaching and releasing which shapes our lives makes us weigh the cost of our human greed and grasping materialism, and leaves us empty in a world which was given to us in an abundant condition. Yet from that emptiness, and in our drained state, we must still generate the will to live, the energy to surge, to rise and renew ourselves. ' (Publication summary)
'This collection of poems is charged with electric musicality, full like a glass at a wedding or a wake – and the cover equates the human being, arms extended, with a chalice which evokes the human spirit itself. The elixir this work contains is spiked with anger and despair, but it also shimmers with exuberance, and the draught it offers is addictive. Anne Casey’s work opens up issues of war, of degradation, of disrespect, covetousness and harassment, which drain us of hope, and dignity. She shows that the compulsive reaching and releasing which shapes our lives makes us weigh the cost of our human greed and grasping materialism, and leaves us empty in a world which was given to us in an abundant condition. Yet from that emptiness, and in our drained state, we must still generate the will to live, the energy to surge, to rise and renew ourselves. ' (Publication summary)
