In this extraordinary debut collection, Kathleen Bridget Eva O’Hanlon dives deeply into a personal history that holds a mirror up to all the ways we piece together a lifetime of memories to weave a story of our many connected selves. Rich in references to literature, history, myth and culture, the poetry here remains accessible and resonant, clear-eyed, acutely observant and bristling with intelligent humour. We are reminded of the ways fragments of our pasts become defining moments – the casual remark to a child over a Crunchie bar that remains brutally clear decades later, the act of undemonstrative kindness that makes a child feel seen and valued in the simple gift of a wooden butter curler, the radical grandmother who ‘called a penis, a penis’, the life events and ordinary days that mark us – from almost marrying Casanova to childbirth, from our hungry ghosts to the way insomnia blurs into vision, threading loss and memory. It’s late and getting later, but still there is wit and life, still there is a legacy to leave and hope to insist on, memories that reshape both past and future. Still there is a credo – in the ‘great and final roar that is to come’ and in love.
