Midwinter, Susan Connolly

Brugh, Brú, Bro, Broe, Brow, Sí an Bhrú and Brú na Bóinne are some of the early placenames for the megalithic tomb of Newgrange. Traces of these survive in the names of a house, a field, a lock, a canal and a ford: Broe House, Broe Park, Broe Lock, Upper and Lower Broe and the Ford of Broe, and also in the name for the modern Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre. Cnoc Búa, meaning Bua’s Hill; Chnó-guba, meaning nut lament: both are names for Knowth. The Boyne Cable Bridge, the Mary McAleese Bridge and the M1 Bridge are different names for the same bridge. In midwinter Susan Connolly explores the local landscape of Drogheda and surrounding area in lyric shapes and visual poetry using a typewriter font, handwriting and two letter stamp sets.

Susan Connolly lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth. Her poetry collections are For the Stranger (Dedalus Press, 1993), Forest Music (Shearsman Books, 2009) and Bridge of the Ford (Shearsman Books, 2016). Her artist’s books What Noise on Earth (2019) and Looking Across the River (2022) were published by Redfoxpress. Her poems are included in The Field Day Anthology: Volume IV, Voices and Poetry of Ireland and Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916. In 2024, with the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, she made POEM, a handwritten poetry map of the River Boyne. POEM is a concertina book measuring more than 3 metres long.

Published by Macha Press
Softcover, thread-sewn, french flaps
128 pages
210  x 210 mm
ISBN: 9781068769948