Belfast Launch of Nessa O'Mahony's new poetry collection 'Her Father's Daughter'

And while I'm on the subject of launches, this Friday 14th November if you are in or around Belfast, do get along to Nessa O'Mahony's poetry reading at 6.30pm in No Alibis Bookshop, 83 Botanic Avenue. I've never been but it's enticing and I hear they throw a very good launch. Soon, soon.

In the new poetry collection, she examines the nature of those bonds through poems that combine the autobiographical with the historical as she explores poetically two very contrasting father-daughter relationships from two very contrasting periods of Irish history. 

Nessa’s grandfather, Michael McCann, was a quintessential Irish nationalist of the early part of the 20th century. He fought for the British in World War I, then fought against the British in the Irish War of Independence and finally fought his fellow countrymen in an Irish Civil War.

In this collection, Nessa presents a parallel sequence of poems, one relating to her relationship with her own father, whose decline and death she charts with painful honesty, the second exploring the life of her grandfather, a more mysterious figure whose story slowly emerges through her mother’s memories, and her own research. The result is a meditation on love and losing and on what is retained through narrative and memory.

Reading alongside Nessa will be local poet Colin Dardis, who I believe is also well worth a listen.

Later in November, Friday 28th at 7pm to be precise, the poet Kerrie Hardie will be launching her new collection. Should be another good one.