A Christmas Round-up of 2023 Bookshelf Goodies
Highlights that made their way to The Storm Shelter bookshelf in 2023, not all published in 2023 but discovered, or rediscovered this year … Step into the Dark, by Julie Stevens, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press HOWL, New Irish Writing, an anthology of stories and poem, 2023 Glisk and Glimmer, poems about Light, an anthology…
The Poet Spells Her Name by Sarah Connor
But I wish, just once, she would gorge herself, and turn laughing, with juice-stained lips … I said of Sarah Connor’s debut poetry chapbook, The Crow Gods, published by Sídhe Press, that it was a significant collection, never anything less than sensory, a debut far from novice territory, one that I’d bookmarked into the memory.…
Thief by Bianca Bowers: Guest poetry review from Richard Gibney
Richard Gibney, writer and editor, joins us today with a review of Bianca Bowers’ poetry collection Thief No shortage of creativity in Thief: Bianca Bowers’ lamentation on poetry block Peppered with gems throughout, Bianca Bowers’ latest poetry collection, Thief, shows both the poet’s growth at verse-craft and the poet-narrator’s frustration that, as the poem ‘Quiet…
Eclectia by Seamus ua Trodd: Guest poetry review from Richard Gibney
Richard Gibney, writer and editor, joins us today with a review of Seamus ua Trodd’s poetry collection Eclectria. With its magnificent thematic breadth and awesome formal diversity, Seamus ua Trodd’s debut collection of poetry, Eclectia, features work that focuses on events in history alongside more personal pieces that capture transcendental moments of insight or clarity…
The Keeper of Aeons by Matthew M.C. Smith
I drive through the city’s limits to see the stars… With The Keeper of Aeons, Smith takes us on journeys down into caves, out into space and back through time, to infant infatuated with Star Wars, Storm Troopers and Luke Skywalker, a giddy guardian under the glimmer of 80’s Top of the Pops TV stars,…
Missing Pieces by Karen Mooney
‘Possibility exists in the spaces between’ I’ve known Karen Mooney for over two years now, first introduced to her as she read her poem I Touched You, as part of the Women Aloud NI event at the Eastside Arts Festival in Belfast, now available to watch on YouTube, a poem at the height of Covid…
More than a Mere Murmuration. A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers. Pratibha Castle 
In the back garden here in Lusk, at the edge of Dublin, along Ireland’s east coast, there are many birds, sea gulls due to our proximity to the coast, blackbirds who return annually to build their nests in the chimney despite its metal bars, thrushes more recently and sometimes the sighting of a yellowhammer or…
Poetic Treats from 2021
Some of the poetry collections and pamphlets that arrived this year to ensure my life at Storms Stayed Bloody Poetic Make sure your Christmas Stays Bloody Poetic🎄
Adele Cordner – The Kitchen Sink Chronicles
A descent into the mayhem of a crisis, coming to terms with Covid concerns in The Kitchen Sink Chronicles, looking out for holds of hope, wishing for buds to blossom, to refill what the shelves no longer offer before the bough breaks and it comes down to all but a cradle of wood, no ketchup…
Elisabeth Horan- Just to the Right of the Stove
Elisabeth Horan’s latest collection Just to the Right of the Stove opens by the fridge, a cold beginning perhaps to counter the heated conversations that will unfold from our two protagonists, one already doomed and the other trying to decide. The first poem is voiced by both Sylvia Plath and our own Elisabeth, wondering if…
Under Photon Crowns, Selected Writings of Dai Fry
Under Photon Crowns, Selected Writings of Dai Fry is the first individual chapbook collection published by Black Bough Poetry and is an incredible kaleidoscope of journeys, bright black waves of twisting movements that take us far beyond the glories of ‘Majorelle skies’ and down deep into the ‘wild-green waters’ to ‘the breath of the Kracken’…
Thomas McColl – Forever After, Between the Pages
Forever After, Between the Pages of Poetry CollectionsA Series of Interviews with poets on how their collections came together & what followed after. When my debut poetry pamphlet was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in September 2020 there were two things I started to reflect on; the journey it had taken me to get…
These Queer Merboys; Serge Neptune
Two weeks ago, I sat in the armchair by the window, a wet Wednesday afternoon and opened Serge Neptune’s debut poetry collection These Queer Merboys published by Broken Sleep Books and an hour later had finished the last page, one of the few books I’ve sat and devoured in just one sitting. As I dived…
Thicker than Water; Jane Dougherty
‘And when I taste the taste of you, it is the layered shell sprinkled-tang of all recorded time.’ The quote above is the last line of the 1st poem in Jane Dougherty’s debut collection, a collection that opens straight away into the sea’s water and the air’s rain falling onto the earth with its rough…
The Gull and the Bell Tower – Kari Flickinger
This collection brought me back to jazz nights at Le Duc des Lombards in Paris in the late 90s with its strained light, stifling smoke and those journeys the sounds took me on; joyous, jerking, juvenile, gyrating, discombobulating, dysphoric, destructive, devouring, divine, the mind always running after that next note, never quite able to identify…
The Woman With An Owl Tattoo – Anne Walsh Donnelly
Anne Walsh Donnelly opens her chapbook The Woman with an Owl Tattoo, published by Fly on the Wall Press, with the no-holes barred, blaring, bold Guide to Becoming a Writer, a poem that documents a life in change, in search, in turmoil, in the depths of despair, indivisible from the pen. And we instantly know…
Mamiaith by Ness Owen
‘Begin with fearlessness…’ from the poem How to Begin Mamiaith by Ness Owen There is a deep sense of loss in the opening poem to Ness Owen’s Mamiaith (Welsh for Mother Tongue) but it is delicately laid down with a hope for rebirth; a memory planted within the roots so we can look out the…
Quicksand – Julie Stevens
In the new chapbook Quicksand, by Julie Stevens, published by Hybriddreich, there is a line in the opening poem that reads ‘I’m a factory working hard to produce a mystery, a collection of broken parts awaiting an answer…’ and this is indeed a collection of broken parts but it delivers its message clearly and its…
Spectrum of Flight – David Hanlon
I can remember, creeping down the stairs, after midnight, my parents sleeping, my heart trying to break out of my ribcage, turning on the tv as the sound of my breath rose beyond control, turning down the volume and clicking on to Channel 4 to watch Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane as nerves stuck like knives in…
SEASONS – KATIE PROCTOR
Katie Proctor is only 17 and yet already understands her position within the universe and how precarious that is and how it changes, how sometimes you sleep next to the stars and other times you’re left alone hoping that very star is whispering your name on her tongue, in another time and place- ‘you, with…
Eat the Storms- Damien B. Donnelly
My debut poetry pamphlet collection is called Eat the Storms and was published on the 17th September 2020 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. In 2019, while still living in Paris, I was one of three winners of the White Label Debut Poetry Pamphlet Collection and this collection is that winning dream come to life. ‘I…
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