Internationally award-winning poet and writer
out of emptied cups
***BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019
THE LONELY CROWD***
***BEST DRESSED 2020
SUNDRESS ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS***
Poetry collection written by Anne Casey, published by Salmon Poetry in July 2019.
Book information:
Summary and extracts on Salmon Poetry website.
where to buy:
‘out of emptied cups’ can be purchased direct from the publisher: Salmon Poetry
Also available from bookshops including Kennys in Ireland; Kinokuniya, Better Read Than Dead Books and Garden Lounge Artspace in Australia.
Purchase online via Poetry Portal Bookshop, Book Depository, Abe Books and Fishpond, among others. Check Bookfinder to compare prices.
responses to this book:
***Books of the Year 2019***
—K.S. Moore selecting Books of the Year 2019
in The Lonely Crowd (UK)
"each stanza is a fierce bite leading up to the final disturbing unanswerable question"
—Review by Martina Evans in The Irish Times.
"This is a brave, beautiful body of work."
—Review by Dr Wendy J Dunn in Backstory Journal
(Swinburne University, Melbourne)
"'All Souls' is mesmerizing. The poet's telling of the 'understory' of the bodies of 800 babies discovered in Galway county and the tens of thousands of jailed women, pregnant and unmarried, could not prepare me for the emotions flooding my consciousness. It inspired me to go back into the gloried pages of 'out of emptied cups' where, like a hermit, one could live in the imagery with very little needed to survive but the pure music of those sounds to quench the heart's life-thirst."
— James Ragan, poet, playwright, Fullbright professor
"Casey’s award-winning poems not only plumb the soul, but stagger at the weight the soul must bear."
—Review by Rochelle J Shapiro in Empty Mirror
"If poetry is the closest art we have to silence,
—Eleanor Hooker in Mascara Literary Review
"In this subtle, tightly spun work,
the placement of every breath counts."
—Melissa Todd in Thanet Writers
—Matthew MC Smith, Managing Editor, Black Bough Poetry
—Dr Wendy J Dunn in Live Encounters
—Review by Maggie Ball in Compulsive Reader
“Reading Anne Casey’s poems, I want to 'embrace the world with a desperate love’.”
—Luka Bloom
"breathtaking poetry and poignant melodies"
—K. S. Moore, poet
— Review by Les Wicks in Plumwood Mountain
"a deeply personal voice and impact.
Her language resonates with rhythm and rhyme,
—Review by Jeff Santosuossa, Managing Editor, Panoplyzine
"Anne Casey's poems often pull in two directions: their delicate construction often contrasts with the subject. They don't shy away from tackling harsh realities yet still retain a sensitivity towards trauma. "
—Review by Emma Lee, Reviews Editor, The Blue Nib
"The elixir this work contains is spiked
but it also shimmers with exuberance,
—Review by Devika Brendon in Rochford Street Review
“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
"T.S. Eliot once observed poems are
Anne’s poems articulate for women everywhere
the silences imposed on us by our gender –
how society wants to shape us into
—Dr Wendy J Dunn, novelist and 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 hT.S. Eliot once observed poems are “a raid on the inarticulate”. Anne’s poems articulates for women everywhere the silences imposed on us by our gender – how society wants to shape us into its idea of womanhoodonesty, 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
***BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019
THE LONELY CROWD***
***BEST DRESSED 2020
SUNDRESS ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS***