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"These
assured poems speak of sorrow and loss, loneliness, relationships,
tender and erotic love, the seasons, with delicate grace and clarity.
Though frequently elegiac in tone, Louise C. Callaghan's poetry
in its journey among 'the hedgerows of the heart 'is a poetry of
affirmation and celebration" Niall MacMonagle
"Callaghan's
poetry meshes a personal and universal world-view, drawing on
memory and relationships. Celebrating both love and loss she writes
with a lyric voice. Ultimately, it is the courageous human spirit
in many of these poems, which connect her to her readers."
Joan McBreen
About
the Author
 Louise
C. Callaghan was born in Dublin and educated at University
College, Dublin. She has travelled widely in India, the USA, Majorca,
Spain, Mexico and Ecuador, South America. She spent 1995-1996
in Oakland, Northern California where, together with facilitating
writers' workshops for women, she took creative writing classes
at the University of California at Berkeley. The Puzzle-Heart
is her first collection of poetry.
A
Poem from
The Puzzle-Heart
Transmigration
for Gail C. Polacsek
I
unfolded the lily-root
laid out its pallid locks
composed a prayer
for transplant of the new bulb
into fresh peat-mould.
Worn
out with flowering
the old corm
in a paperbag, makeshift shroud
is consigned to the cold
cellar, colourless as a wasps' nest.
Ready
for my clay-red bowl
the amaryllis seems heavy
freighted, like a human heart
but no, it is someone's lost soul
waiting, sleeping all this time.
(©
Copyright Louise C. Callaghan, 1999)
PRAISE
FOR 'THE PUZZLE-HEART'
"Louise C. Callaghan's poetry is rich with the sad wisdom of a
mother, and pulsing with the passions of a lover. The poems
in her first collection, The Puzzle-Heart, range from poignant
accounts of adult children leaving home, Moving Out and Letters
to America ("I feel lost in the house, empty/as the old gutters
that cling/to the edge of our roof") to reflections on the birth
of a granddaughter and those heart searing poems which map the
geography of love -- loneliness, desire, loss. ("I choose you/heart
that never heals/nest of pleasure/ bright, world-calling rose"
- Rosa Mundi).
These poems resonate with passion, "she
kindles your voice/the unspeakable joy in your deep roar" (Poetry)
and sorrow "My waterfall face mossy/with half-green leaves" (To
Tears). They face quietly but bravely, and on occasion almost
fiercely, into loneliness and "into this slow movement--/the death
of love." But here also are poems of simple pleasure, of joy in
the changing of the seasons, "Calm, lovely May/of the hawthorns
... listen/mother-of-all-months/to the invisible love--/the soft-wooing
woodpigeon" (May Altar) and the company of women, as in the long
and accomplished poem, Vally De La Luna with which the collection
ends.
Crafted with sparseness and rigour, Callaghan's
poetry shares something with her Palatine daughter -- a stoicism
in the face of life's intrinsic sorrow and absurdity, and an unyielding
integrity and commitment to truth-telling.
Yes, I will let you come to me
I am all yours, only don't expect
me to talk of love, even in my sleep,
nor honour your people's oppositions
when there is no safe haven
for settler or dispossessed
(The Palatine
Daughter Marries a Catholic)."
Gay Community News
"The
Palatine Daughter Marries a Catholic is a crisp and elegant treatment
of dissidence and perseverance, expressed with a precise lyricism:
'Now I have not the least sense of place,/ never wear the
same colour twice." The rhythm is rooted in an half-articulated
resistance which marks Callaghan's most engaging poems." Kathy
Cremin, The Irish Times, Feb. 14th 2000
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