The story of the stolen or missing child sits at the heart of The Poison Glen, alongside a desire to bear witness to family loss and cultures of silence in Ireland. Weaving together landscape, history, and the compelling mythology of a Donegal site known as ‘The Poison Glen’, here are poems of grit and burning, of wildness, grace and magic, of dreaming and compassion. The collection is rooted by ‘The Foundling Crib’, a poem that dwells on a long-gone Foundling Hospital in Dublin, accompanied by poems written as responses to sites of various Irish church- and state-run institutions.
In poems both tender and ferocious the book illuminates questions that run deep in the Irish psyche. Ultimately it asks, How can darkness be overcome by light?
Memory is a curse that keeps on flowering. — ‘Ghostgirl
Free event but must be booked in advance. Click Here to reserve your place.
A link to the ARENA audio interview
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her poetry books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017) and Town (The Salvage Press, 2018). Her most recent collection, The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021), was listed as a Book of The Year 2021 in the Times Literary Supplement (UK). Ní Churreáin is co-librettist of Elsewhere, a new opera by Straymaker (IRL). She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award and a former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany). In 2023 she is Writer in Residence at the Druskininkai Poetic Falls Festival, Lithuania. Ní Churreáin is the Guest Editor of Poetry Ireland Review Issue 140 and she is the incoming Poetry Editor of The Stinging Fly. Visit www.studiotwentyfive.com.
This event will be held outdoors at the Bere Island Standing Stone or Gallán which is said to mark the exact centre of the island.
It’s located in the townland of Greenane in a place known locally as Ard na Gaoithe (windy height) and is 3m tall. Legend has it that a giant on the mainland threw a stone at the Cailleach Beara/The Old Hag of Beara but it missed and landed on the island. The stone is part of the Beara Way walking loop on Bere Island and can be easily accessed.