Back From Away – Damien B Donnelly – A poetry collection

On Wednesday 8th May 2024, at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, alongside Belfast poet Emma McKervey and her new collection Highland Boundary Fault, Turas Press published my 2nd full poetry collection Back from Away.

Blurbs…

In a delightfully honest way, the poet glides between countries and explores what it means to belong to a place. The shadows of his past experiences darken and enliven the colours of Ireland. With the precision of a true wordsmith, he creates visceral and unforgettable experiences for his readers, enabling them to animate what is on the page. Dr. Tapasya Narang

Although full of inventive, even shape shifting poems revelling in lush imagery, the perfect balance of this exciting and vividly realised collection, away speaking to back, the delights and sorrows of childhood and adolescence foreshadowing a questioning and questing maturity , the narrow canals and narrower canal boat home of the young man giving way to the open sea at Lusk and Rush, along with the poet’s skilful and assured touch, means that what the reader is encountering is not so much perfect poems as powerful elegies. We are sometimes untethered from our moorings, not tied to bricks or beds or bodies or river, where we can delight in the playful freedom of the striking and buoyant language, but always learn to come home, to the be anchored in the here and now with all of its frustrations and riches. Linda McKenna (In the Museum of Misremembered Things, Doire Press 2020)

You can listen to me read a poem from the collection at #PoetryHappening with thanks to Books Ireland magazine…

https://booksirelandmagazine.com/poetry-happening-damien-b-donnelly/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0eDrmva_M3xz4yoZ-dMIIGWOt349Qz4VEBk76VgKEkYcFJmTK0CKfQSxY_aem_AdyEADDHq2D_xRTw2PmAyvMRJhucUjbnAAhL7G30KEYTK5exJmML95y0ttiqvjSD4NOeUrbL-wK9d2xlNFx8V9rY

You can watch a short poetry film on YouTube featuring one of the poems from the collection…