Bone House is the new collection from Co. Down poet and ACNI Major Artist, Moyra Donaldson.

The poems in Bone House centre around the powerful and sometimes troubled relations between mothers and daughters. They bring historical, contemporary personal and psychological perspectives to the subject, creating a contemporary narrative. They traverse themes of loss, duty, grief and joy, as well as exploring psychoanalytical accounts of motherhood. Described by poet Paula Meehan in the foreword as ‘ferocious and clear eyed’, this collection shines a light on how this most intimate of relationships is at the centre of so much of life.

‘There is fire, hail and a streak of white lightning running through these extraordinary poems. Bone House kept me awake at night. One of the finest collections I have read in a long time.’

Annemarie Ní Churreáin, author of Bloodroot (Doire Press)

‘”It seems I closed my eyes and dreamed a life.” Nothing is permanent or fixed, but the generations live and speak through this work, they are there in the patient discipline of physical tasks; in the recognition of how hard life can be when ‘dawn/is far away in both directions’; in the duality inherent in the honouring of family and tradition. Moyra Donaldson’s Bone House is furious in its range, depth and grief. It is the work of a poet fully alive to the moments of pure light “before the darkness closes in again”                                                                                                                    

 Kerry Hardie, author of Where Now Begins (Bloodaxe Books)

A Sudden Shaft of Light

My demented mother

who doesn’t know me anymore,

looks up as I come into the room.

Ach – there’s my wee darling Moyra

she says, such love in her voice

that everything falls away but love.

The slate is clean

and I, new born again and perfect,

know myself beloved daughter

before the darkness closes in again.