Winner 2021
Anne Casey
Nominations: 2021
Category: Literature
Location: Northbridge, NSW 2063, New South Wales, Australia
About Anne: Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Anne Casey is an award-winning poet/writer and author of two critically acclaimed poetry ... Read More
Congratulations Anne
Our heartiest congratulations to iWGA 2019 winners. We are proud of you and so is the Nation. Keep shining & motivating others.
Work Description
Originally from the west of Ireland, Anne Casey is a poet and writer living in Sydney, Australia. Over a 30-year career, she has worked as a business journalis... Read More
- 2020 • 1st Place in Into the Void Poetry Prize 2020 (Canada). • 1st... Read More
- - Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Poetry Ireland and the Resea... Read More
- 2019 • 2nd Place & Highly Commended in Planet in Peril Poetry Compe... Read More
- 2018 • 1st Prize in 2018 Alice Sinclair Memorial Writing Competitio... Read More
- 2016: Approved by Board of Australian performing rights organisati... Read More
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Project Details
'out of emptied cups' is a poetry collection which explores what it means to be human—a consciousness contained within a shell that dictates so much of what our experience of life will be. Including internationally award-winning and shortlisted pieces, these strongly felt poems interrogate wha... Read More
- 'out of emptied cups'
Photos
Label
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error
Project Details
'where the lost things go' is a poetry collection which traces the experience of losing oneself through life’s most formative journeys. Fly back and forth through four decades in narratives bridging the west of Ireland and Australia – buffeted by grief, betrayal and dislocation; gliding on hope a... Read More
- 'where the lost things go'
Photos
Label
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error
Project Details
'the light we cannot see' is a poetry collection which traverses a globe caught in the combined turmoil of the climate crisis, COVID-19 and humanitarian unrest, as seen through the eyes of a mother worried for her children's futures and an exiled daughter struggling with loss and separation from ... Read More
- 'the light we cannot see'
Photos
Label
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error
Project Details
In this lyrical, often wry, sometimes heartbreaking and just occasionally horrifying selection of poems, internationally award-winning poet, Anne Casey invites you to step into her shoes, take a self-guided cruise through the State of Womanhood with its redacted facts and multiple travel warnings... Read More
- 'Portrait of a woman walking home'
Photos
Label
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error
Work Description X Close
Originally from the west of Ireland, Anne Casey is a poet and writer living in Sydney, Australia. Over a 30-year career, she has worked as a business journalist, writer, magazine editor, media communications director and legal author. She is author of two poetry collections; Vice President of Voices of Women Incorporated, a not-for-profit literary and performance arts initiative; and Guest Editor of Not Very Quiet Journal 'Memoir' Issue 2020. She has served on numerous editorial advisory boards, is a regular guest editor/literary curator and was Senior Poetry Editor for the two literary journals of Swinburne University in Melbourne - Other Terrain Journal and Backstory Journal from 2017 to 2020.
Anne's writing and poetry are widely published internationally and rank in The Irish Times newspaper's Most-Read. She has won, placed or been shortlisted in poetry awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia - see Awards. After a long absence, while pursuing a business media career, Anne 'came home to poetry' while grappling with her grief after her mother's death - her first poem as an adult was published in The Irish Times in 2016. This poem, In memoriam II: The Draper, was the fifth most-read item - across all categories - in The Irish Times on the day of publication and resulted in a furore of social media commentary.
Her poetry appears in newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies, videos, music albums, podcasts, broadcasts, archives and art exhibitions. As part of a collaboration with chart-topping Australian hip hop artist, Tuka, two of Anne's poems feature on his 2020 album, 'Nothing In Common But You'. Through a collaboration with Australian artist, Jane Theau, a selection of Anne's poetry featured as visual art and voiceovers at the 'Stitched Up' exhibition at Newcastle Gaol in July-August 2017. Her writing was selected to be performed on stage in Sydney and in film by professional actors as part of the The Monologue Adventure and Voices of Woman in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Anne's poem, 'Recipe for a Giant Pickle' was selected to be performed by the Climate Guardians at the inaugural Biennale of Australian Art (BOAA) - the largest ever showcase of living Australian artists - in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia in October 2018. Her poem, 'scion' was selected for inclusion in the Spirit of Nature poetry and art exhibition at Manly Art Gallery, Sydney in November 2018. A recording of Anne's poem 'Between ebb and flow' was selected for inclusion in The Poetry Jukebox during February and March 2019. ' What Lies Beneath - a lament for the Great Barrier Reef', written by Anne Casey by special invitation, was performed by international environment activists, The Climate Guardians at the opening of leading contemporary Australian artist, Janet Laurence's 'After Nature' exhibition at iconic Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia in February 2019.
Anne is author of out of emptied cups (Salmon Poetry 2019) and where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017, 2nd ed 2018). She is a regular reader at literary and other events, and has appeared at fixtures and venues including the Consulate General of Ireland, Sydney; State Library of New South Wales; Ireland's largest and longest running traditional music summer school and festival, Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy; one of Europe's oldest and most respected literary festivals, Cúirt International Festival of Literature (Galway, Ireland); Poetry Ireland (Dublin, Ireland); the University of Missouri-St Louis; the University of Newcastle (Australia); Swinburne University (Melbourne); the University of Canberra; Casula Powerhouse, New South Wales; Rowan Tree Readings (Ireland); Ó Bhéal (Cork, Ireland); Over The Edge (Galway, Ireland); The Poetry Circle (Limerick Writers' Centre, Ireland); Salmon Literary Centre (Clare, Ireland); Irish Women Abroad (Sydney); Sapphos (Sydney); Reading the River (Brooklyn, NSW, Australia); Sydney Poetry Lounge (Sydney); Kinokuniya Books (Sydney); Poets' Corner (WestWords, Sydney); Better Read Than Dead (Sydney); North Shore Poetry (Sydney); Cuplet (Newcastle); Edith Cowan Writers' Centre (Perth); Melbourne Poets Union (Melbourne); Manly Art Gallery (Sydney); Garden Lounge creative space (Sydney); Girls on Key (Newcastle, Sydney and Melbourne); Remembrance Day for Lost Species 2019 at Articulate gallery in Sydney; and That Poetry Thing (Smith's Alternative, Canberra) - for upcoming dates, see: Readings & Events. See also: Interviews & Media.
Anne is included in the following archives:
Irish Poetry Reading Archive at James Joyce Library, University College Dublin
Poets & Writers Directory
Contemporary Irish Women poets
An Index of Women Poets
AustLit at the University of Queensland.
Her article "Returning from Australia, I barely recognise my hometown", which included two poems, was the Number 1 most-read piece overall in leading Irish national newspaper, The Irish Times, over the weekend it was published in August 2017 and featured in the newspaper's Most-Read for 2017. The article tackled family issues related to emigration and resulted in widespread commentary on social media. It was republished in The Irish Echo, Australia's Irish newspaper, under the title "When distance becomes your enemy" in September 2017. Anne's feature article, including one poem, entitled 'Home is where the heart is' was published in print in the Christmas Edition of The Irish Times Magazine on 21 December 2019, also appearing online in The Irish Times newspaper under the title 'The last Christmas I spent in Ireland was 12 years ago'. This article featured in the Top 10 Most Read items in the newspaper, also reaching No 1 over the weekend of its first publication.
Anne's article "The Lock Up", which included one poem, was the most-read feature article and the third most-read piece overall in The Irish Times newspaper over the weekend of its publication in May 2017, and featured in the newspaper's Most-Read for 2017. The story unearthed a shameful history of abuse, rape and neglect suffered by marginalised children in 19th century Australia. Anne was subsequently interviewed by Roisin Ingle on The Women's Podcast for The Irish Times. Other articles of Anne's featuring in The Irish Times Most-Read include: "Marked women, unmarked graves and my typical Irish childhood", published in May 2018 and "'In Australia I’m regarded as Irish, but in Ireland I’m not from here’" published on 6 July 2019.
You can find Anne's poetry in publications etc including The Irish Times, Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), Australian Poetry Anthology, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Canberra Times, Tahoma Literary Review, Entropy, apt journal, Quiddity, Barzakh (Albany, State University of New York), Life in Quarantine (Stanford University), The Murmur House, DASH (California State University), Crosswinds, Pratik, HCE Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Westerly Magazine, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, Autonomy anthology (New Binary Press), Abridged, Verity La Magazine, Eureka Street, FourXFour Journal (Poetry Northern Ireland), The Honest Ulsterman, University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize Anthology 2018, ACU Prize for Poetry Anthology 2019 and 2020 (Australian Catholic University), In Your Hands poetry anthology (The Red Room Company 2020), Boyne Berries, Ablucionistas, Wordpeace Journal, Mingled Voices 4: Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology 2019,, HeadStuff, Burning House Press, Poethead - A Celebration of Women's Poetry for International Women's Day 2018, The Poetry Jukebox, Women’s National Book Association (USA) Sixth Annual Writing Contest Anthology, Giant Steps: Fifty poets reflect on the Apollo 11 moon landing and beyond anthology (Recent Work Press 2019), Mingled Voices 4: Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology (Proverse Press 2020), Heron Clan VII anthology, Children of the Nation anthology, Messages from the Embers anthology (Black Quill Press 2020), Embody 2 anthology (Verity La), The Journal (The Australian-Irish Heritage Association of Western Australia). From the Ashes anthology in aid of Australian bushfire relief (Maxium Felix Media 2020), Stilts Journal, The Australian Poetry Collaboration, Henry Lawson Verse & Short Story Anthology 2018, The Poets' Republic, The Australian Showcase Edition of The Enchanting Verses (2019),Scope Magazine, Digging Press/Digging Through the Fat, A Plague of Poetry, Backstory Journal (Swinburne University, Melbourne), Into The Void Magazine, The Incubator, Live Encounters, The Irish Literary Times, The Stony Thursday Book, Déraciné, Panoply Literary Zine, Awake in the world ecopoetry anthology (Riverfeet Press 2019), The Same, Not Very Quietjournal, ROPES Literary Journal (25th edition), What She Knew (Papaya Press, UK), Bedford International Writing Competition Shortlist Anthology 2017, Burningword Literary Journal, In the News anthology (The Poetry Box 2018),Verse Daily, Poems and Pictures (Mary Evans Picture Library, UK), Bangor Literary Journal, An Áit Eile, Black Bough Poetry, Bold+Italic literary journal, Bedford Writing Bookshelf, The Diamond Jubilee (60th Anniversary) Edition of the Clare Association Yearbook (2019), The Clare Association Yearbook 2018, The Corrugated Wave, Addictions & Compulsive Behaviour mini-anthology (Poetry Pharmacy 2017), Wrong Way Go Back anthology (Pure Slush 2020), Unheard Poetry, unfurl, Poem Today, Pink Cover Zine, Poethead, HUSK Magazine, Enthralled Magazine, FemAsia Magazine, Not4U Zine, EMPWR, Other Terrain Journal (Swinburne University), Tales from the Forest, Dodging the Rain, Luminous Echoes: A Poetry Anthology, Deep Water Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, The Remembered Arts Journal, Richard Reads, Thank You for Swallowing and Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words. She has work forthcoming in Noir Nation, Poems and Pictures (Mary Evans Picture Library, UK) and several anthologies.
Anne has collaborations with artists and composers in Australia, Ireland and the United States. She has written lyrics for 30+ songs, which feature in concerts and live performances, music albums, videos and on radio. Through a professional collaboration with US musician, Rex Haberman, Anne co-writes songs for bands including War Poets and Light Over There. Rex and Anne's song, Wednesday Girl, features numerous well-established US artists. In October 2015, Anne co-founded Casey and Lewis songwriting with Australian musician/composer, John Lewis. Via a global licensing agreement with CCLI, their songs are currently in use in countries including the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and have received extensive radio airplay. Anne also has a collaboration with Irish singer-songwriter, Claire Watts.
Anne holds an honours Law degree from University College Dublin and qualifications in Media/Communications from Dublin Institute of Technology. She is a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. She is a member of New South Wales Writers’ Centre, Australian Poetry and Australian performing rights organisation, APRA AMCOS.
All of Anne’s written works are subject to copyright. She has global royalty agreements in place with APRA AMCOS and CCLI.
Award X Close
2020 • 1st Place in Into the Void Poetry Prize 2020 (Canada). • 1st Prize in Published Fantasy Authors Competition 2020 (Australia). • 1st Prize in Proverse Poetry International Prize 2020 (Hong Kong). • 3rd Prize in Poetry Day Ireland Competition 2020 -
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- Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Poetry Ireland and the Research Institute. • Finalist in Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest 2020 (USA) • Honorable Mention in Crosswinds Poetry Contest 2020 (USA). • Commended in Sutherland Shire Literary Co
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2019 • 2nd Place & Highly Commended in Planet in Peril Poetry Competition (UK) - a joint initiative by Fly on the Wall Poetry Press; World Wildlife Fund; The Climate Coalition; Dr Michelle Cain (Oxford University); former Derbyshire Poet Laureate, Helen M
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2018 • 1st Prize in 2018 Alice Sinclair Memorial Writing Competition - Fellowship of Australian Writers, Lake Macquarie, NSW (Australia). • 1st Prize in Henry Lawson Verse & Short Story Competition 2018 - Traditional Verse (Australia). • 3rd Place in Wome
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2016: Approved by Board of Australian performing rights organisation, APRA AMCOS as Full Writer Member. 2013: Appointed Committee Member, LETS (Letefoho East Timor Support). 2011: Appointed Committee Member, Touched by Olivia Foundation (award-winning
About Anne X Close
Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Anne Casey is an award-winning poet/writer and author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections— where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017) and out of emptied cups (Salmon Poetry 2019), with two books of poetry forthcoming in 2021. Her second poetry collection was selected for Best Dressed in 2020 by Sundress Academy for the Arts 2020 in the USA – the curators of the prestigious Best of the Net awards. This book was also selected for Books of the Year 2019 by The Lonely Crowd magazine in the UK.
Anne has worked for 30 years as a journalist, magazine editor, media communications director and a legal author – she has researched and written several significant legal publications (300-600 pages each), including one market leader. She has held senior positions in government and the private sector – including running Enterprise Ireland-Australia/New Zealand (the Irish government's trade agency), for whom she hosted Presidential and Ministerial delegations to Australia; Communications Director for PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Product Development Manager for CCH international legal publishers. Senior Poetry Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne) from 2017 to 2020, she has served on numerous literary advisory boards and as Vice President on the board of Voices for Women. She is a regular guest editor for literary journals.
Anne's essays, articles and poetry are widely published internationally and rank in The Irish Times newspaper’s Most-Read. She has won/shortlisted for poetry prizes in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia – including the ACU Prize for Poetry, Henry Lawson Poetry Competition, Women’s National Book Association of USA Poetry Competition, 25th Annual Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition, Hennessy New Irish Writing, Cúirt International Poetry Prize, Overton Poetry Prize, Bedford International Writing Competition and Fellowship of Australian Writers Queensland Literary Competition.
Her poems feature internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, anthologies, podcasts, music albums, stage shows and art exhibitions –The Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), The Irish Times, The Canberra Times, Australian Poetry Anthology, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, Quiddity, Entropy, The Murmur House, Barzakh (State University of New York), Connecticut River Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Westerly Magazine and Cordite Poetry Review among many others. Anne is included in the following archives:
• Irish Poetry Reading Archive at James Joyce Library, University College Dublin
• Poets & Writers Directory
• Contemporary Irish Women poets
• An Index of Women Poets
• AustLit at the University of Queensland.
A frequent headliner at literary events, conferences and universities, Anne has given reading tours in Australia, Ireland and the USA. She has featured at fixtures including the Consulate General of Ireland (Sydney); State Library of New South Wales; Ireland's largest and longest running traditional music summer school and festival, Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy; one of Europe's oldest and most respected literary festivals, Cúirt International Festival of Literature (Galway, Ireland); AWP, the largest bookfair and conference in North America; Poetry Ireland (Dublin, Ireland); the University of Missouri-St Louis; the University of Newcastle (Australia); Swinburne University (Melbourne); the University of Canberra; Edith Cowan Writers' Centre (Perth); Casula Powerhouse; and Don Bank Musuem, Sydney.
Anne has written lyrics for over 30 songs, which are played in more than 11 countries on four continents (including the USA, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa), and on more than 20 radio stations. She has creative collaborations with artists and musicians in Australia, the US and Ireland – amongst others, her poems feature on 'Nothing in Common But Us' music album (EMI/Universal Music 2020) by chart-topping Australian hip hop artist, Tuka, and on 'The Lost Codex of Avalon' album by chamber composer David Yardley for release in December 2020, featuring the Sydney Chamber Choir. She also has ongoing colloborations with visual artist, Jane Theau; stage and film performance company, Voices of Women; music groups, War Poets (USA), Ambientronic (Australia); chamber music composer, John Lewis (Australia); and singer-songwriter, Claire Watts (Ireland).
Anne holds an honours Law Degree from University College Dublin and qualifications in Media Communications from Dublin Institute of Technology (Technological University Dublin), where she was awarded First Place in her graduating year. She has recently been awarded an Australian Government scholarship to undertake a PhD at the University of Technology Sydney.
Website: http://anne-casey.com/.
'out of emptied cups' X Close
'out of emptied cups' is a poetry collection which explores what it means to be human—a consciousness contained within a shell that dictates so much of what our experience of life will be.
Including internationally award-winning and shortlisted pieces, these strongly felt poems interrogate what it means to be a woman in a world where the female body still preordains so much for the person it contains. Deliberately weaving in and out of, and cross-referencing, each other, these poems reveal multiple perspectives on the same or related narratives.
At times unabashedly political, this book plumbs the poet’s own experiences of birth, death, loss, treatment/mistreatment and place in the world—as a woman, as an immigrant, as a parent, as a former environment journalist/author depicting the decline of our planet, as a human being questioning our treatment of others based on lines on a map and ‘so many lengths/of slick red tape’.
Collectively these poems strive to cross the boundary between body and soul. To be filled to overflowing. Emptied. To be simultaneously half-full, half-empty. To drink deeply of this one precious cup and find meaning in the traces of what remains—“lifting our hearts/out of emptied cups/and away with them/into the heavens”.
Responses to the work:
“Reading Anne Casey’s poems, I want to ‘embrace the world with a desperate love’.”
Luka Bloom
“In poems often formally playful, Anne Casey looks hard at human experience—sex, love, vulnerability, danger—and refuses to look away; the poems display resilience and speak back against shame. out of emptied cups explores not only what it is to be a woman in this world, at this time, but what it is to be alive, body and soul.”
Maggie Smith Poet
“From the mystery and grace of language to wry humour and a delicate ability to lay the self open, from unflinching grimness to eloquent notes of lamentation, pointed political satire and an enthusiasm for the shape-shifting play of words, this collection gives us the sustained sense of discovery that is poetry at its best.”
Peter Boyle Poet and translator
“This is very powerful work, and very timely. It doesn’t flinch at telling the difficult stories, but it also does so in a controlled, crafted manner: this is skilful writing.”
Kerry Featherstone & Carol Rowntree-Jones Overton Poetry Prize (UK)
“A heartbreakingly beautiful exploration of human consciousness, Anne Casey’s out of emptied cups is masterfully conceived and holds the reader to the page. This is poetry full of sorrow and wonder, of souls at spiritual thresholds, lit from within, language as pure enchantment, at once startling and liminal, ‘lifting our hearts/out of emptied cups/and away with them/into the heavens’.”
Hélène Cardona Poet, actor and translator
“The poems in Anne Casey’s out of emptied cups remind us that we live in a figurative not a literal, world. Her musical, inventive syntax harnesses memory as image-maker and family as cornerstone, where the spectral and the grounded are given equal weight. Craft and technique are a major feature of this work, and can be seen in the detail woven through wide-angle landscapes or the minutiae of the domesticity. Imagination is the driving spark that lights ‘the infinite possibilities of the here and now...’ (Observance).”
Anthony Lawrence Poet and author
“Anne Casey’s second collection is a haunting journey through the natural world, contemporary marriage, motherhood, and the experience of the migrant aching for family and birthplace. She also delves into the fraught and heartbreaking territory of the Catholic Church’s treatment of women and children in Mother and Baby homes in her native Ireland. This is fine work, both delicate and brave, a kind of libation poured, paradoxically, out of the ‘emptied cups’ of the title.”
Melinda Smith Poet
“One of the most poignant and surprising takes on family life since Akhmatova, rooted in lived experience that many share but few have the combination of courage or skills to articulate in poetry, this is the work of a poet at the full measure of her powers, successfully realizing Yeats’s goal for his own work, of giving serious study to sex and the dead.”
Eddie Vega Writer, poet, W.B. Yeats Society of New York
“The ancients once said the stars made music which no one can hear – but it is there – real, speaking to our souls. The music of Casey's poetry we can indeed hear. Her poetry sings with honesty, striking at the reader's heart. This is a brave, beautiful body of work. The power of Casey's poems reminded me of what the poet Muriel Rukeyser once said: ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open’. Casey's truth confronts us in her poetry, and challenges us to gaze through her eyes. Her poems tell a woman's truth, the truth we all need to listen to, if we want the world to change.”
Dr Wendy J Dunn Novelist and poet
'where the lost things go' X Close
'where the lost things go' is a poetry collection which traces the experience of losing oneself through life’s most formative journeys. Fly back and forth through four decades in narratives bridging the west of Ireland and Australia – buffeted by grief, betrayal and dislocation; gliding on hope and love.
Feel the weight of emptiness in the emigrant’s baggage; the displacement of the Nowhere people who leave but perhaps never fully arrive; the loss at returning ‘home’ to find the essence of what that means – people, places and credos – has slipped away in your absence.
This collection is about letting go of your concept of ‘home’, moving through loss, embracing hope, and finding yourself somewhere in between.
Are we, after all, mostly the sum of what we gain from all our losses?
Responses to this book:
"Read this for its beautiful, heartrending poetry about emigration and bereavement."
– Martin Doyle, Books Editor, The Irish Times
“Lyric, for their song-like pulse and melodies, but with strong narrative bones, Casey’s exquisite poems collect the spectral, and hold and cherish the fleeting. Witnessing gain as well as loss, these are poems of acute, witty and empathic vision.”
– Felicity Plunkett, poet, critic and Poetry Editor at University of Queensland Press
“Anne Casey's strongly worked poems – including a most powerful Inversion impress as heart-felt observations of a time and place.”
– Ciaran Carty, author, leading Irish critic and broadcaster, and editor of Hennessy New Irish Writing
“We feel every form of loss exposed or explored by Anne Casey's poems. Such a heart she has. They are subtle, rich, ironic, and sharp as ‘switchblade … tongues.’ Read this book — feel ‘the spaces between things.’”
– Lizz Murphy, poet, Poetry Editor at The Canberra Times
"'Where the Lost Things Go' is a powerful book. [...] These are poems that bear regular re-reading, and in whose rhythms a human heart beats so strongly it’s impossible not to feel drawn in."
- Magdalena Ball, author, poet, critic at Compulsive Reader
"Her poems bring us back to the elemental, a time when our senses were 'searing', our hearts 'ablaze'."
- Rochelle J Shapiro, author, poet, critic
"Neat, truncated language and glorious imagery. A poignant remembering of a broken-hearted mother urging her emigrant daughter home. This collection is alive with 'tuppenny dreamers', worrying young mothers, as well as with the ghosts of West Clare, and the fresh colour and displacement of Australia where the author now lives, far from her 'little town/at the wave-washed edge/of the world'.
– Nuala O'Connor, award-winning Irish novelist and poet
“Anne Casey’s poetry exploded like a firework across the Irish poetry world during her reading tour of summer 2018. Long may she continue to emit such light.”
– Kevin Higgins, literary critic and ‘likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland’
"Anne Casey’s poetry is close to the raw bone. From the first and marvellous title poem in the collection, where the lost things go, Anne’s remarkable poems capture the nuance of time and place, of home and absences."
– Eleanor Hooker, award-winning Irish poet, writer and literary event convenor
"What’s quite wonderful is also the measure that Anne, as a poet, takes to express the ever-existing daily chores as things that are not just what they are, but also how they are and how we take them to be."
- Jayant Kashyap, poet, editor, reviewer in Humane
'the light we cannot see' X Close
'the light we cannot see' is a poetry collection which traverses a globe caught in the combined turmoil of the climate crisis, COVID-19 and humanitarian unrest, as seen through the eyes of a mother worried for her children's futures and an exiled daughter struggling with loss and separation from loved ones in her native Ireland. Navigating the path of these apocalyptic spheres and their devastating impacts – including the catastrophic bushfires in her adoptive homeland of Australia – the poet strives throughout this collection of award-winning poems to connect with our "one persisting challenge – to somehow find our allied humanity". A probing reflection on the human condition, this book leans always towards "the light we cannot yet see, but know lies ahead". [To be published by Salmon Poetry in 2021]
'Portrait of a woman walking home' X Close
In this lyrical, often wry, sometimes heartbreaking and just occasionally horrifying selection of poems, internationally award-winning poet, Anne Casey invites you to step into her shoes, take a self-guided cruise through the State of Womanhood with its redacted facts and multiple travel warnings, feel the red hot sting of betrayal, and leave behind nights of secrets and dread to rise with the rage that her fine sisters gave, a scattering of blue skies and a pocketful of hope on the long walk home. [To be published by Recent Work Press in 2021]
