dismantle is a reimagining, a re-examining of what it means to be human. Here is the arc of a life, from first cell to last breath and beyond. Pulsating with emotional energy, these poems ask difficult questions with uncertain answers: what is it to be a child, a daughter, a woman, a man? And what's more, what is it to be? Imbued with the fierce energy of the crone, dismantle reclaims our connection to our true wild nature and the deep earth. This is a dismantling in the truest sense—of time and memory, of the ideas we inherit, of the self.
"dismantle is a moving excavation of what it means to be a woman in the world today. Peeling back layers of meaning with precision, Tannam brings us a wild underworld of lost children, mothers and crones, each imbued with a fierce agency often denied them in the old myths. Formally and linguistically virtuosic, ‘dismantle’ is both an exquisite undoing, and a call to explore the wide world."
Jessica Traynor
Author of Pit Lullabies
"Anne Tannam’s dismantle is formally daring, emotionally charged, and endlessly inquiring, it blew me away with its intensity. Here is a poet at the height of her power. "
Alice Kinsella
Author of Milk: On Motherhood and Madness
"Anne Tannam’s newest collection is imaginative, unpredictable and pulsating with emotional energy. Whether challenging ideas of femininity and masculinity, womanhood and motherhood, re-examining myth, or seeing eye-to-eye with an aching personal loss, Tannam’s language is keenly felt. This is a dismantling in the truest sense – of time and memory, of the ideas we inherit, of the self."
Luke Morgan
Author of Beast
"By ruminating on the crone, the other, the unfamiliar, the collection imparts power to those silenced by patriarchy. With remarkable investment in the meaning and etymology of words, it explores language's ability to both oppress and liberate. Astonishing, witty, sensational and, above all, it provides the much needed journey out of reticence."
Dr Tapasya Narang
Postdoctoral Researcher
Anne Tannam has published three poetry collections, Take This Life (Wordonthestreet Publishers 2011), Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and ‘Twenty-six Letters of a New Alphabet’ (Salmon Poetry, 2021). She is the current Poet in Residence with Poetry Ireland (2023-2025). She was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2022 and from Dublin City Council in 2023. For more on her poetry, visit www.annetannampoetry.ie. Anne is also a Professional Certified Coach who helps writers design and sustain flourishing writing practices. For the past 35 years she’s mentored and facilitated and regularly runs workshops and clinics nationwide and internationally. For more on Anne’s coaching, visit www.creativecoaching.ie
she rarely gets straight to the point
patience she reminds you
her hair a tangled nest of twigs and leaves
all the good stuff takes time
the earth’s crust hardening / slow
shifting continents / the time it rained
for two million years / the heavens
opening / the earth’s upturned face /
throat a river mouth of quenched desire
* * *
precipice
magpies discover the wood pigeon nest in the tree
outside the house / by the time you get there the
chicks are lying on the footpath / snow angels /
bloodied wings fanning the concrete / heads caved
in / a shimmering aura about their broken bodies /
soft and yielding when you scoop them up / one
first then the other / placing them out of harm’s
way / reminded of the afternoon when a young
magpie flew down the chimney / its panicked
attempts at flight / your hands firm around its
body / heart beating wildly against the knife’s edge
* * *
using story to ask for forgiveness
in this version you are the woodcutter
you are the woodcutter’s wife
you are the dead mother
you may also be the witch
sometimes she is hansel
sometimes she is gretel
sometimes she is their whispers
in the dark of the hungry night
for brevity’s sake we’ll dispense
with the pebbles and breadcrumbs and crying
always it is six days before her ninth birthday
always she is thirsty and you don’t take heed
always her body’s cellular mutiny
the sickly fruitiness of her breath
like most stories it goes back to an absent mother
a fearful father
a blindsided moon
in one version a parched forest
crawling on its knees begging for water
a gingerbread house eating itself from the inside out
and dry eyed death salivating
rattling her cage
trying to sweeten her up