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. Themes of loss, widowhood and ageing co-exist with observations of her wild garden and its inhabitants, including a mangy fox she helps to survive. Small acts of salvage are often all that is possible in the face of overwhelming odds, such as the permission given during the Covid-19 pandemic to go 2km from home. This allowed Donovan to swim at White Rock, her local beach, thus staying afloat through the fear of that brutal time and what came next - the death of her mother. 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. 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 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'.

About the Author

Katie Donovan was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California at Berkeley. She has published six books of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books: Watermelon Man (1993), Entering the Mare (1997), Day of the Dead (2002), Rootling: New & Selected Poems (2010), Off Duty (2016) and May Swim (2024). Off Duty was shortlisted for the Irish Times-Poetry Now Award. Born in 1962, she spent her childhood on a farm in Co. Wexford before moving to Dun Laoghaire, a suburb of Dublin where she still lives. She has worked as a journalist with The Irish Times, a Creative Writing Teacher at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (in Dun Laoghaire), and currently teaches Creative Writing at NUI Maynooth. Her work has been widely anthologised, most recently in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry, edited by Peggy O'Brien, and in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley. 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.

Reviews
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 [on Off Duty] *
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 [on Off Duty] *
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 [on Off Duty] *



Book Information
ISBN 9781780376868
Author Katie Donovan
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 8mm