My new poetry collection, The Holy in the Passing Place, is now available as a pocket paperback.
These poems grew out of journeys, hospital hours, walks, memories and the shared rhythms of home. They were first published individually on NeuroDivine.ie. Gathering them into a book has allowed me to hear the conversations between them: how a railway journey can speak to a period of waiting, how grief finds its way into familiar objects, and how love gives shape to ordinary days.
The collection moves through four sections: Roads and Thresholds, Hours the Body Keeps, Love Makes a Home, and What Remains. Together, they explore Irish places, life on dialysis, marriage, loss and unexpected grace. An introduction and notes on selected poems offer some of the background to the writing.
Christian faith runs through these pages alongside my experience of being neurodivergent. There are questions and weariness here, but also humour, tenderness and delight. Life with my husband, Andrew, is part of that story, as are the journeys and treatment routines that shape my weeks.
The cover is personal too. It features my photograph of a winding path in Moore Abbey Wood, here in Monasterevin. I liked the invitation in that image: a familiar place, a turn in the path, something still beyond our sight.
There is also a small typographical detail inside that makes me smile: catchwords at the foot of some pages, anticipating the first word on the next. I first typeset books by hand with my grandfather, and I think he would have loved that touch.
It is a pleasure to see these poems finding a home together. I hope readers will find moments that speak to their own lives—and reasons to pause over things they might otherwise pass unseen.
The Holy in the Passing Place is available from the Lulu Bookstore at €14.99, with other currency prices available and delivery charges shown at checkout.