Books by Susan Connolly

A chance encounter with an elderly man beside the orchard at Donaghmore was the catalyst which led Susan Connolly to explore the life of Francis Ledwidge in greater depth, and to write her sequence of poems, The Orchard Keeper. Francis Ledwidge enlisted in 1914, and survived until July 31st, 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres.

The Sun-Artist is a collection of "pattern poems" by a poet who has been experimenting with visual texts - often with a uniquely Irish "subject matter" - for several years. Her last Shearsman collection, Forest Music, featured a number of such works, but this chapbook is entirely visual.

Susan Connolly is a true original. These poems reach back to Kells, to Durrow, to Lindisfarne, to the holy books of those places, for the ground of their being. On the page, they negotiate visual spaces that can comfortably fit and ritualize the neolithic, contemporary hostage crises and the whammy pedal of a guitar.

A collection of poems that depict the author's personal encounter with her landscape. It celebrates the famous archaeological monuments of Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange alongside local landmarks: the Maiden Tower, the seawall at Baltray and the discovery in a back garden of a cobbled garden dating from the early nineteenth century.