Where Now Begins

Kerry Hardie was born in 1951 and grew up in County Down. She now lives in County Kilkenny with her husband, the writer Seán Hardie. Her poems have won many prizes, including the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry in 2005. Her poems have featured in six Bloodaxe anthologies: Staying Alive, Being Alive, Being Human, The Poetry Cure, The New Irish Poets and Modern Women Poets. She has published six collections with Gallery Press: A Furious Place (1996), Cry for the Hot Belly (2000), The Sky Didn’t Fall (2003), The Silence Came Close (2006), Only This Room (2009) and The Ash and the Oak and the Wild Cherry Tree (2012). Her Selected Poems (2011) was published by Gallery Press in Ireland and by Bloodaxe Books in Britain. Her seventh collection, The Zebra Stood in the Night, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2014 and shortlisted for the Irish Times–Poetry Now Award. Her eighth collection, Where Now Begins, is published by Bloodaxe in 2020. Her first novel, Hannie Bennet’s Winter Marriage appeared in 2000; her second, The Bird Woman was published in 2006. Kerry Hardie is a member of Aosdána.

Hardie’s skills as a lyric poet are second to none, and the meeting of that ability with the need to break new ground is productive of exceptional writing, reminiscent but by no means derivative of Elizabeth Bishop, in its combination of attention to detail and startling, subtly-worked-towards insight.

• 11 It’s a small tree,12 Letters from the Dead13 Now14 Inishmaan15 How She Disposes of Fear16 Inhabitants17 Into Light18 Last Swim19 Too Late for Sorry Now20 Talking to My Stepson21 Shasta Daisies22 Voyeur23 Losing It24 Piseog25 Taking the Weight26 He talks to me about field trials27 Time Passing28 Real Estate29 Day Lilies30 Poem in a Circle32 July Drought33 Hymn34 Rhyme for a Rhino35 Blasted36 The Inadequacy of Letters of Condolence37 Mondrian Dream, Somewhere in Russia38 On Reading Michael Longley’s Snow Water39 Bolt the Shutter40 Shopping41 American Pastoral42 April43 Civil War Aftermath44 ‘Peace is the root of all wars’45 Derry46 Permission48 Tide-turn on the Brittany Coast49 The Stone at the Heart of a Pear50 There’s More Than One of Us in Here53 Depression54 Escapology55 On Revisiting Gallarus Oratory56 ...what I call god57 Sky Station, Skellig Michael58 Crow-light59 All Saints60 All Soul’s Day, November the 2nd61 Winter Solstice62 Salt, Flame63 Bird Talk64 ‘and all shall be well’65 Eel-speak67 The Emigrant’s Letter68 Coats70 Notes