Sligo based poet Maeve McKenna brings to life new chapbook, A Dedication To Drowning.
On February 18th 2022 Maeve McKenna will be joined by Anne Tannam, who will introduce Maeve’s work. The event will take place online and Maeve will perform poems from the collection and take any answers from the audience. Attendees will be offered 10% off the collection on the night. You can book your place here.
In this raw and moving debut chapbook, Maeve McKenna dives into the multitudes of womanhood: a mother, unmothered; a lover, alone; a child, now aged. She flings the cover off pain that would otherwise remain hidden and unspoken, exposing the most intimate parts of herself. In doing so, she invites the reader to embrace their own vulnerabilities, calling, “Let’s assemble our bodies, limb to limb against/the walls of unoccupied margins, hope pointed/like the scope of a firing squad…I am writing it for you. For me.”
Maeve McKenna lives in rural Sligo, Ireland. In 2018, her work was shortlisted for the Red Line and highly commended in the iYeats International Poetry Competitions.
In 2019, she was highly commended in the Frances Ledwidge and longlisted in the Over The Edge Poetry competitions. She was joint runner-up in the Trim Poetry Competition and the Hanna Greally Poetry Competition, 2020, as well as coming third place in the Canterbury Poet of the Year, 2021. She is a Pushcart nominated poet.
Her work has been published in Mslexia, Orbis, Sand, The Galway Review, Marble Poetry, Channel Magazine, Fly on the Wall, The Haibun Journal, Bloody Amazing Anthology, Culture Matters A Working Class Anthology Of Prose Writing. Her poems have appeared online in Atrium, The Ofi Press, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Honest Ulsterman, HeadStuff, Dodging The Rain and many others.
Maeve was a recipient of two Arts Council of Ireland Awards 2020/2021, a finalist in the Eavan Boland Mentorship Award, 2021 and a recipient of a John Hewitt Summer School bursary, 2021. She was part of a poetry collaboration with three poets which won the Dreich Alliance Competition.
You can read more about the book and order your copy here: https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/a-dedication-to-drowning-by-maeve-mckenna
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