Mercy by Risn Kelly
Roisin Kellys Mercy is an attempt to reconcile her Irish Catholic background with her pagan heritage, transcending the limits of a world in which everything is connected. Both intimate and political, this powerful debut collection combines a passionate exploration of self with an awestruck confrontation of wilderness. Roisin Kelly lives in Cork.
Róisín Kelly hauls the mythological up into the contemporary world in this fiercely tender collectionLove and loss are laid bare again and again under constellations new and old, in skies above Greece, Portugal, America, France, and Ireland. Kelly’s intelligence and wisdom ignite each of these poems, whether funeral pyre or beacon in the dark light. Mercy burns with ruthless beauty. -- Zsuzsi Gartner * author of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives *
What is striking about Kelly’s writing is that she intentionally situates herself within Ireland’s literary tradition, frequently drawing on Yeatsian images like the rose. She is unswerving, however, in her desire to draw romance and realism together, and Kelly revives the symbols of old so that they might be re-spoken in a brazen, drunken voice… Kelly’s poetry is at once tender and savage, steeped in tradition yet brave in expression — she takes readers where they don’t want to go, a feat that most writers attempt, but few achieve. -- James O’Sullivan * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Unafraid of sentiment, these twenty poems meditate on lost love, longing, and the tendency of intimacy to arrive as an utter surprise, and dissolve just as swiftly. -- Grace Wilentz * Poetry Ireland Review (on Rapture) *
This brief collection shows remarkable emotional range. Kelly leaves the reader afloat on a tide of colour.’ -- Alison Brackenbury * PN Review (on Rapture) *
What is striking about Kelly’s writing is that she intentionally situates herself within Ireland’s literary tradition, frequently drawing on Yeatsian images like the rose. She is unswerving, however, in her desire to draw romance and realism together, and Kelly revives the symbols of old so that they might be re-spoken in a brazen, drunken voice… Kelly’s poetry is at once tender and savage, steeped in tradition yet brave in expression — she takes readers where they don’t want to go, a feat that most writers attempt, but few achieve. -- James O’Sullivan * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Unafraid of sentiment, these twenty poems meditate on lost love, longing, and the tendency of intimacy to arrive as an utter surprise, and dissolve just as swiftly. -- Grace Wilentz * Poetry Ireland Review (on Rapture) *
This brief collection shows remarkable emotional range. Kelly leaves the reader afloat on a tide of colour.’ -- Alison Brackenbury * PN Review (on Rapture) *
Róisín Kelly was born in west Belfast and raised in the rural Irish county of Leitrim. After a year as a handweaver on Clare Island and a Masters in Writing at NUI Galway, she now calls Cork City home. Her first chapbook of poetry, Rapture, was published by Southword Editions in 2016. Publications in which her work has appeared in Ireland, the US and UK include Poetry, Magma, Ambit, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review and Winter Papers. In 2017 she won the Fish Poetry Prize. Her first full-length collection, Mercy, was published by Bloodaxe in 2020.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781780375007 |
| ISBN 10 | 178037500X |
| Title | Mercy |
| Author | RóisÃÂn Kelly |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2020-03-26 |
| Number of pages | 64 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |