{"product_id":"mercy-9781780375007","title":"Mercy","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIreland. Night. A grotto to the Virgin Mary illuminates a deserted road. Overhead, the soundless roar of the Milky Way’s glittering traffic reminds us of a past that runs parallel to our own uncertain times. Olives ripen in a Portuguese valley. The sound of gunfire approaches a Paris café. Irish women revolutionaries march towards their future. Tigers prowl through County Leitrim's rural townlands, whose old names emerge like neon signposts from the dark: Red Marsh, Small Watery Place, Round Hill of the Boys. Róisín Kelly’s Mercy is an attempt to reconcile her Catholic background with her pagan heritage, transcending the limits of a world in which everything is connected. Both intimate and political, this powerful debut collection combines a passionate exploration of self with an awestruck confrontation of wilderness. Róisín Kelly was born in west Belfast, raised in Leitrim, and now lives in Cork. Her pamphlet Rapture (Southword, 2016) was described by Leanne O’Sullivan as ‘fierce and mysterious, beautiful and compelling’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRóisín Kelly hauls the mythological up into the contemporary world in this fiercely tender collection. Love and loss are laid bare again and again under constellations new and old, in skies above Greece, Portugal, America, France, and Ireland. Kelly’s intelligence and wisdom ignite each of these poems, whether funeral pyre or beacon in the dark light. Mercy burns with ruthless beauty. -- Zsuzsi Gartner * author of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives *\u003cbr\u003eWhat is striking about Kelly’s writing is that she intentionally situates herself within Ireland’s literary tradition, frequently drawing on Yeatsian images like the rose. She is unswerving, however, in her desire to draw romance and realism together, and Kelly revives the symbols of old so that they might be re-spoken in a brazen, drunken voice… Kelly’s poetry is at once tender and savage, steeped in tradition yet brave in expression — she takes readers where they don’t want to go, a feat that most writers attempt, but few achieve. -- James O’Sullivan * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eUnafraid of sentiment, these twenty poems meditate on lost love, longing, and the tendency of intimacy to arrive as an utter surprise, and dissolve just as swiftly. -- Grace Wilentz * Poetry Ireland Review (on Rapture) *\u003cbr\u003eThis brief collection shows remarkable emotional range. Kelly leaves the reader afloat on a tide of colour.’ -- Alison Brackenbury * PN Review (on Rapture) *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e9  Mercy 10  Leave 11  Mars in Retrograde 12  Tom Barry 13  Chameleon 15  Penelope 16  Domínio Vale do Mondego 18  Guarda 20  A Massage Room in West Cork 21  Rapture 22  In America 23  Mary Anne MacLeod 25  Mar-a-Lago 27  La Chalupa 28  At a Photography Exhibition in New York Public Library 29  Rose 30  Glenveagh 31  Storm Warnings 32  Paris, 13 November 2015 34  Tropical Ravine House in Belfast Botanic Gardens 35  Eden 37  The Cave of Melassini 39  Ithaca 41  Oranges 43  Easter 44  Miracle at Standing Rock 46  The Unicorn Children 47  Tigers in Leitrim 48  Poem for a Friend’s Unborn Baby 50  Northern Lights 51  Cosmic Latte 52  irish coffee 53  Mercury in Retrograde 54  Ophelia 56  Amongst Women 59  Wedding Below the Perseid Meteor Shower 60  Tuam 62  Granuaile 64  Notes","brand":"Bloodaxe Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49411754623319,"sku":"9781780375007","price":9.45,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781780375007.jpg?v=1730514584","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/mercy-9781780375007","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}