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Annemarie Ní Churreáin

Poet Annemarie Ni Churreain

Biography

ANNEMARIE NÍ CHURREÁIN is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland and for the 2018 Julie Suk Award in the U.S.A. Her publication history includes Poetry Ireland Review, The SHOp, The London Magazine, Agenda Poetry Journal and The Stinging Fly. Ní Churreáin has been awarded literary fellowships by Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, The Jack Kerouac House of Orlando and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She is a recipient of the Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council and a co-recipient—alongside poets Kimberly Campanello and Dimitra Xidous—of the inaugural Markievicz Award.  Ní Churreáin is a member of the Writers In Prisons Panel co-funded by the Arts Council & the Department of Justice, Equality and Reform. In 2020, Ní Churreáin was an Artist-in-Residence at  Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris. BLOODROOT is her debut collection.

Genre: Poetry
Number of publications: 1

Shortlisted for the 2018 Shine/Strong Award

A work of muscle and grit, of vision and clarity, Bloodroot is truly exceptional. Among the strongest debut collections of the decade.

— Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Sample Work

Sample Poems From Bloodroot

Protest

One cut and the hair worn since childhood
fell upon the floor
dead soft.

A spear-thistle;
her new, bald skull
refused order.

She belonged to heather
and in tail-streams
cupping frogs,

delighting
in the small, green pulse of life
between palms,

not here:
at the dark centre of reunions, separations,
starved of air.

This was a protest of love, against love
demanding
sun, rain, wilderness.

From a finger, she slid a band
placed it underfoot,
pressed down

until the stone
made the sound of a gold chestnut
cracking open.

 

Six Ways to Wash Your Hands (Ayliffe 1978)

for the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation

1
Wet hands, apply soap and rub palm to palm
until a white lather forms like the spit and rage of women,
who, having lain among waves, were dragged back up again
by the hair and stripped of their names to pay for the wrongs
in their bellies, as they stitched lace, pressed linen sheets,
and each week bowed their heads to the post-partum girls
all lined up at the font like a row of roots half-pulled
out of the earth and still holding on to their young.

2
Rub right palm over left dorsum and left palm over right dorsum
to ensure the scent of infant leaves your skin: the sour fumes
of bottled milk, triangled terry cloth, ice-cold smears of cream.
The scent of sin can cling for years as potent as a bad dream
of trade-deals, needle pricks, poppies bloomed on the skull.
The scent of a child in an unmarked grave may get in beneath
your fingernails and cause all sorts of problems in later life.

3
Rub palm to palm, fingers interlaced and around the wrists
to erase all trace of fathers. Never mention cuffs.
Never mention scars. Raise your head against the sky
and let the violet clouds overfill your eyes as the names
of these men become again unknown as birds.
When you see a wing, like a realm of thumbed pages
fluttering, take this as a sign: the fathers are no more.

4
Rub backs of fingers to opposing palm with fingers interlocked
and loosen the joints of wards, nurseries, bolted pantries
stocked with canisters of warm milk and cheese sold
by the yellow quart as the imagined cream of it dripped
from the mouths of hungry, swollen girls. Rub out the halls,
statues, sills. Leave only a rusted nail in a cemetery wall.

5
Rotational rubbing of right thumb clasped in left palm and vice versa
to disimprint the memory of files. Wash clean the data
until days, months, years signed by clammy hands run
like slip-streams into a great shaking lake. This means
that even should your lips part to release a holy word
all that will spill out is a wet pulp no one understands.

6
Rotational rubbing backwards and forwards with clasped fingers
of right hand in left palm and vice versa to wear thin the heart-lines.
Be a sister and repeat the law like a hymn into the sink.
Do not commemorate: Do not remunerate. Do not let
the wounded woman or her child speak in a bare tongue.
Wash in this way and rid your hands of Mother, Baby, Home.

Reading at Cork Poetry Festival

Sisters on RTE

Books

Bloodroot
Bloodroot Short Fiction Book by Annemarie Ní Churreáin published by Doire Press

ISBN: 978-1-907682-58-2 | Pages: 72 | Published: 2017

Bloodroot explores the frailty and complexity of human relationships, often addressing the question of what it means to ‘belong’ in the world. Having grown up flanked on one side by the Atlantic Ocean and on the other side by a troubled political border, Ní Churreáin brings the perspective of living in subliminal tension and surrounded by natural beauty to her poetry. Many of her poems inhabit parallel worlds, suggesting dual ways of experiencing people, places and events, often evoking the mystery of ‘in between’ places.

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Notice

Doire Press is out of the office from October 6th to October 14th. Please note that orders won’t be posted until October 15th.
Thank you,
Lisa and John,
Doire Press