Testimonials

"Katy Mahon's impressively controlled poems leave nothing to waste. There is intimacy, wit and music here in these tightly wound narratives that leave the reader asking the questions of what happens next to the lives who inhabit them. A joy!"

Ralph Dartford

"This collection shines with many forms of light: ochre, sometimes livid, sometimes quiet. And music and myth jostle for position in the liminal spaces between stave and stanza, where ghosts of songs can be heard and rage is expressed to an 'unforgiving Chopin glissando'. [...] Through it all, a new voice emerges, not in the shadow of a renowned poet but with its own distinct trajectory."

Mark Connors

"Who would not love a poet who begins a powerful run of poems with the line 'Unlike the ancient Greeks, I don't do elegies' and then goes on to make moving lyrics of grace and power, real elegies? This is a poet for whom memory is a tool to uncover essential emotional truths. Katy Mahon's poems create space for grief to have its time and take it, for joy to have a surprising resonance even in the shadows of a life, and for the solace that close attention to process brings."

Paula Meehan