May Swim

By turns lyrical and sardonic, this new collection from Katie Donovan is characteristically watery candid and uncompromising in its refusal to inhabit the safer reaches of the shore.Whether writing about her hybrid car, the death of whales from ingesting plastic waste, abortion now being legal in Ireland, or the increase in demand for sex dolls, Donovan's idiosyncratic range of tone and subject continues to enthral and engage the reader thirty years after her debut collection,Watermelon Man, arrived with its 'distinguished and open language' and 'bold statements of identity' (Eavan Boland).

In this collection themes of loss, widowhood and ageing co-exist with observations of the poet's wild garden and its inhabitants, including a mangy fox she helps to survive.In some of these new poems the comforting delusion of rescue is highlighted as a flawed but human necessity, as in the case of Ishi, the last of his tribe 'saved to be / a living exhibit in a museum'. Other poems give voice to the remorse that is the haunting of a failed rescue.

In 2017 Katie Donovan was awarded twenty-first O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 'for the intensity and conviction of her poetry, in recognition of the great range of both her craft and her subject matter, and in appreciation of her dedication to the witness and the vocation of the writer'.

Katie Donovan’s new book, Off Duty, emerged out of the illness and premature death of her partner. Donovan records the devastating impact of that illness and loss on her relationships to her young children, her extended family and partner... If Donovan’s subject is compelling, her style is more jagged: buttoned-down plainness coexists with tender, naively rendered details, alongside occasional shifts to a higher and more obviously poetic register. It is a tricky combination, but… it can be surprising and effective. -- John McAuliffe The Irish Times [on Off Duty]
Throughout the collection, Donovan’s voice remains relatable, despite her extraordinary circumstance. She does not romanticise death, or the dying; nor does she make excuses for any ugliness she finds within herself. Yet in ascribing such a tapestry of thoughts and feelings to trauma, she is able to tenderly replicate her experience in all its contradictions; in both its darkness and its light. Off Duty is certainly an account of grieving, for the dead and the dying, but it’s also a study of those who go on living, and who, in time, will thrive again. -- Julia O'Mahony Dublin Review of Books [on Off Duty]
The exact capturing of powerful and often contradictory emotions, thoughts and responses in language this vivid is extraordinarily affecting: a chronicle of almost impossible times, ‘both a searing tragedy and a chainlink of domestic chores’. -- Frank Startup The School Librarian [on Off Duty]

Katie Donovan(with A. Norman Jeffares and Brendan Kennelly), published by Kyle Cathie (Britain) and Gill and Macmillan (Ireland) in 1994. In 2017 she was awarded the 21st Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

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