As Moon and Mother Collide

‘The poems of Mary Melvin Geoghegan are struck with a new vitality derived from the poet’s rootedness in a highly contemporary world. The maternal psyche is explored delicately, throughout this collection and the nature of of human inconsistency. There is Dublin and a memory of the Phibsboro mart, The National Gallery and Monet, Madrid and the art of Picasso and Kandisky, and through the poems she draws the reader on to examine the ways in which an artist’s fury ‘first scythed through the pain’.

In this way change is examined, and often through painting an improverished Rembrandt is raised to light here, and Le Brocquy’s ‘Army massing’ is cleverly linked to what she describes as ‘the same war cry echoing across/Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine....’ The work is fresh, sensitive and does not shirk from the emotional pull which surely is the foundation of good poetry.’

Mary O'Donnell