The Speculations of Country People by Majella Kelly - ISBN: 9781802061727
Paperback
Hidden histories, Irish mythos, and women’s autonomy intertwine in haunting poetry.

The Speculations of Country People

$22.99

  • Paperback

    96 pages

  • Release Date

    4 July 2023

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Summary

The astonishing poetry debut exploring hidden histories, mythical landscapes and self-discovery in the face of limits on women’s bodily autonomy.

In 2017, the presence of a mass grave was confirmed in a disused sewage system in Tuam, County Galway. In it were the bodies of infants – wards of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, where from 1925 to 1961 the children of unmarried women were sent to live their lives in the care of nuns. Their deaths were the result of a culture which, un…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781802061727
ISBN-10:180206172X
Author:Majella Kelly
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:96
Release Date:4 July 2023
Weight:90g
Dimensions:198mm x 129mm x 7mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

This tenderly inquisitive book … oscillate[s] between an intimate interiority … and a powerful poetry of witness. Along with its strong, lyrical voice, the book’s sections are held together by evocative personifications of the natural worldKelly attends carefully to the histories she writes about … [The section on the Tuam Mother and Baby Home] is a poetic inquiry, where skilful and moving language is a tool of investigation. Kelly probes at difficult questions of religion, legacy, grief, and the responsibility of memory and memorial. The poems are lucid with their remembering … full of discovery, [The Speculations of Country People gifts] us with the wisdom that the list of places we are from is not fixed, but rather textured with the continuous possibility of finding home in new people and new places – Alycia Pirmohamed
Majella Kelly offers so much: ecstatic lyricism, historical fiction, genealogy, cultural observation, emotional excavation and virtuosic skill. Her poems have drive, empathy, pathos and joy – Kathryn Maris

About The Author

Majella Kelly

Majella Kelly is an award-winning Irish writer whose work has appeared widely. In 2020, her debut pamphlet Hush was published by Ignition Press, and ten of her poems featured in the Brotherton Prize Anthology. She won the Ambit Poetry Prize in 2018. This is her first book.

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