{"product_id":"playing-the-octopus","title":"Playing the Octopus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Mary O'Malley\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBrand:\u003c\/b\u003e Carcanet Press\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEdition:\u003c\/b\u003e 1\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNumber Of Pages:\u003c\/b\u003e 96\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePartNumber:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781784102807\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRelease Date:\u003c\/b\u003e 31-07-2016\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eDetails:\u003c\/b\u003e Product Description      Joint Winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2018In Playing the Octopus, her eighth collection of poems, Mary O Malley's sensitivity to the spirit of Ireland's west coast is as attuned as ever. In a world both earthen and dreamlike, bodily and mythical, a trout is seen to swallow light through his skin, a wolf howls the great open vowel of his need, and in the emptiness where a tree once stood, a tree-shaped brightness dances. Over the course of the collection, O'Malley twins the Irish west coast with the American east coast, Inis Mór with Coney Island, the parish with the metropolis, the pipes with the axe, each offering its own comfort and wonder. Sylvia Plath, Lois Lane and Antigone feature in an unlikely cast of heroines through which O'Malley tests the mythologies of motherhood and femininity (no mother is ever good enough until she's dead, writes the poet, with characteristic wit). Playing the Octopus is a body of writing buoyed by the redemptive power and sustaining joy of music, and it closes with O'Malley's translations of the Irish poet Seán Ó Ríordáin and the Spaniard Federico García Lorca.      Review      'O'Malley is a true artist in sketching the beautiful, small details without which the essence of place, and the identity dependent on it, can be all too easily erased.' --Eavan Boland'This new collection by one of Ireland's most respected and radical poets is as exhilarating a read as the title promises. Sampling through levels of irony from the neolithic to the neon lights of the lonely cities, from east to west, and indeed the hackneyed wesht (with a characteristically wicked eye), O'Malley offers us lyrics of the salvific quotidian woven together with the surreal elements of surviving our island paradoxes. Insouciant as the pirate queen Grace O'Malley who downfaced Elizabeth the First, Mary O'Malley steps into a zone of power and mastery with these new poems.' --Paula Meehan      About the Author      Mary O'Malley was born in Connamara and educated at University College, Galway. She spent many years living in Portugal before returning to Ireland in the late 1980s and beginning a poetry career in 1990 with the title A Consideration of Silk from Galway-based publisher Salmon. She has since published six other books including a New and Selected. Her latest books have all been published by Carcanet. She is a popular reader of her own work and is frequently invited abroad to read or to teach. Her poems have been translated into several languages.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEAN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781784102807\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eModel:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781784102807\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguages:\u003c\/b\u003e english\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eItem Condition:\u003c\/b\u003e New\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49330481561927,"sku":"2J-1B73-PBQ7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0293\/7474\/2572\/files\/51eHP5EAUML.jpg?v=1712148938","url":"https:\/\/www.pigeonhousebooks.com\/products\/playing-the-octopus","provider":"Pigeonhouse Books, Dublin","version":"1.0","type":"link"}