Beyond the Sea

By: Anne Fitzgerald

€12.00

“Fitzgerald is a poet whose work I have followed with great interest for a long time and I would recommend her new volume to those who have not yet discovered her impressive work. The appropriately-named ‘Beyond the Sea’ shows her marrying her Irish-inflected language to a truly international experience of the world and its literatures. She creates her unique effects with a densely-patterned music whic...

ISBN	978-1-908836-20-5
Pub Date	Monday, September 10, 2012
Cover Image	Dublin Bay with Cloud Sky (2002), reproduced by kind permission of the artist, George Potter RHA. Photography by Gillian Buckley, courtesy of Taylor Galleries.
Page Count	74
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“Fitzgerald is a poet whose work I have followed with great interest for a long time and I would recommend her new volume to those who have not yet discovered her impressive work. The appropriately-named ‘Beyond the Sea’ shows her marrying her Irish-inflected language to a truly international experience of the world and its literatures. She creates her unique effects with a densely-patterned music which takes us from tight lyrics through to the edges of prose poetry. In all her experiments, however, we never lose contact with words as a source of pleasure and excitement in themselves. Anybody seriously interested in modern poetry will want to read this book.” Ian Duhig

“Fitzgerald’s poetry races up against the present fine manners of the well made poem in Ireland. The tumble of language with grammar in Fitzgerald’s lines carefully switches referents and unfolds syntax in surprising, sometimes bewildering ways.” Thomas Dillon Redshaw

“A reverence for language and a precision in its deployments informs these poems. It is a fine thing to have them in the world.” Thomas Lynch

Anne Fitzgerald

Anne Fitzgerald was raised in Sandycove, County Dublin. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast. Her poetry collections are Swimming Lessons (Wales, Stonebridge, 2001), The Map of Everything (Dublin, Forty Foot, 2006), Beyond the Sea (Co. Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Vacant Possession (Co. Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2017).

In 2006 Anne founded Forty Foot Press, in addition to two School Publishing Houses, Monkstown Educate Together Press (MET Press, 2003) and Loreto Abbey Dalkey Press (LAD Press, 2004). She is a recipient of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Writer-in-Residence bursary at The Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco. She teaches Creative Writing in Ireland and in America. Anne lives in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin.

For biography visit Forty Foot Press at www.fortyfootpress.com/anne-fitzgerald.html and on Facebook see www.facebook.com/FortyFootPress.2006/

Dévotion

It makes sense all the same when you think of it. Born

on the feast of finding the true cross, he’d always felt

a direct line, so to speak. Since Johnny gave up the drink

he’s killed worrying them blasted rosary beads to death,

his prints will surely be left on some glorious mystery

like a pilgrim crossing the Mayflower’s gangway, ready

to set sail. Just like the sail Johnny hoists through the neck

of a Jameson twelve year old. Launches it of a Friday

in the Black Swan’s back bar, where Nelly Regan’s pink

paddling pool might well be the lake in Central Park.

For miles they does come to re-enact crusades, to seek

indulgences for battles lost, run ripples in full sail, sack

purveyors of high castle walls, pray turret slits a melody

of martyrs, tall flags wave colour askew as if a tapestry

lost in a watered-down detail of its own threaded myth.

Storm over Manhattan

Couples are making for St. Mark’s for cover,

as you cover me with your Donegal tweed

jacket, passed down from your second cousin

once removed, who was removed to Great Ormond

Street after Omagh. Omaha Nebraska you said

worth a trip once we’d find a way to come

through this dalliance of ours. Lightning strikes

the Empire State. Afterwards, hard rain speaks

volumes to empty streets in a language as fluid

as embraces throwing caution to the wind.

A force ten blows our hull and mast relationship

beyond Liberty. We will sail to the mouth

of the Bosphorus, where Judas trees bloom pink

over Istanbul in pursuit of Constantinople.

Review: Beyond the Sea by Anne Fitzgerald reviewed for Dublin Duchess

There is something mysterious and enigmatic but at the same time mildly addictive about Anne Fitzgerald's writing. Just as when you are reading Joyce, you stumble along saying in your head "I think I know what he's on about", so it is the gist of Fitzgerald's writing that carries you along on the tide.

Beyond the Sea is Anne Fitzgerald's third book of poetry and is published by Salmon Poetry. Living in Dún Laoghaire, the cover of Fitzgerald's collection shows a beautiful painting entitled Dublin Bay with Cloud Sky by George Potter RHA. The book consists of over forty poems and prose pieces which all display a very distinctive style of construction. There is much use of song lines mid sentence that make the reader stop and find the tune in their head as well as the spelling of words to give an accent by the preceding use of the letter 'd', as in "The year d'flying duck flew off the wall of flock,..." in 'Pure Fiction'. Fitzgerald's writing is very firmly placed in its Irish identity and there is also a theme of the characters imbibing various different alcoholic beverages.

The enigmatic style of writing, almost unstructured streams of consciousness, draw the reader in and it is the subconscious that starts to identify recurring themes as the words flow along creating patterns and meaning. There are four prose-style pieces with one in particular, 'Feast of the Assumption',being particularly interesting, with its parallels with the father's pacemaker, his "black box", to the backpacks of the suicide bombers on their way to Heathrow.

There is much to come back to in this collection, to retrace the words and find new understanding and meaning. Likewise, there are other poems that speak straight to you in their clarity; 'Mass Rock at Glenstal' has familiarity in its lines, "this blessed flock wallpaper of ours; where I've traced/ and retraced times spent listening to family histories,/ the Rising, price of the pint and good weather for drying."

Anne Fitzgerald's work is very modern and yet at the same time speaks of Ireland's past, its character and its characters. The experimental nature of her writing is teasing and confusing at the same time and read as a whole, the reader is in turn rewarded by becoming attuned to the voice of Fitzgerald and that voice starts to speak a language that is being shared as you venture forward into the work that is Beyond the Sea.

Other Titles from Anne Fitzgerald

Vacant Possession

€12.00

Beyond the Sea / Anne Fitzgerald

Beyond the Sea

By: Anne Fitzgerald

Other Titles from Anne Fitzgerald

Vacant Possession

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