GALWAY WRITER Attracta Fahy, winner of the 2019 The Irish Times New Irish Writing award, releases her new poetry collection, Dinner In The Fields, tomorrow.
Dinner In The Fields, published by Fly On The Wall press, is heavily influenced by Fahy's work as a psychotherapist, her farming background, and her close affinity with nature and her children.
The title poem, Fahy explains, charts a "journey from childhood to a now ageing woman,” as she reflects on “how nature resonates our humanity, also normalising what would have once been considered abnormal. I touch on social issues like domestic violence, challenge orthodoxy, and our present collective crisis.”
The issue of domestic violence is tackled in 'The Woman in Waterside House': "I have no reason to trust sympathy,/when I tell you I hid for thirteen/days, waiting for marks to disappear./I’m asked if I provoked him:/the guards call the beating,/‘a domestic’."
Psychiatrist and analytical psychologist Máirín Ní Nualláin describes Attracta’s work as “true poetry of the soul,” which gives us “a sense of our connectedness to the universe, to nature, and to each other".
