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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. 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 this collection themes of loss, widowhood and ageing co-exist with observations of the poet's wild garden and its inhabitants, including a mangy fox she helps to survive. 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.
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'.
'In Katie Donovan’s May Swim, an animating tension runs between the experience of loss and the possibility of salvage … Generous, vivid and forthright, these are poems that cleverly balance tenderness with advocacy; resignation with commendable resolve.' – Vona Groarke, The Irish Times
'Throughout Donovan’s work, the flourishing of her own senses, the rich complexity of the human and natural habitats she explores, are interwoven with a steely awareness of finitudes – like a truncated spool of music, or a falling aria that ends in enveloping darkness.' – Ciarán O’Rourke, Dublin Review of Books
‘These are poems about near despair and stubborn hope. What makes May Swim so special is how Donovan reveals these states and entities as symbiotic; we are all connected to each other, to the natural environment, to the generations that preceded us and to those who will follow. The tensions between oppositional states, rather than dividing us, are the very things that bring us together, offer hope, balance us, and create a whole and teeming world.’ – Isabelle Thompson, The Friday Poem
From the reviews of Off Duty:
'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
‘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
‘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
Katie Donovan was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California at Berkeley. She has published five books of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books: Watermelon Man (1993), Entering the Mare (1997), Day of the Dead (2002), Rootling: New & Selected Poems (2010), and Off Duty (2016), which was shortlisted for the Irish Times–Poetry Now Award. 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.
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 Détente
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