Michelle O’Sullivan
On the river’s far side
dim haystacks have begun to disappear;
there are silver needles darning stars.
(‘Station’)
The Flower and the Frozen Sea follows Michelle O’Sullivan’s auspicious debut and builds on the promise of that prizewinning collection. In what is already a recognizable style – short, intense lyrics, often comprising brief lines – her senses focus on the natural world before they detonate surprising realizations. She returns to trees, birds, hills, islands and the river Moy. Colours abound in the painterly quality of her art –in the still life of ‘Between Words’ and in muted landscapes with figures.
From the risked simplicity of ‘Mervyn’s Sheep’ (‘We hear them before we see them’) and the title poem’s ‘a bullock dissolves / in half-hearted mist’ the book ranges to lines that pulse with meaning — ‘And the fires needed to be lit. / The heart of the house had to be wound, set ticking’ — and hint at ‘a different story’.
€11.95 pbk
€18.50 hbk