Book Launch: Poetry & Short Stories

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On October 5th, in the Irish Writers Centre, the Turas Press joint book launch of poetry and short stories celebrated the release of Liz McSkeane‘s short story collection, What to Put in a Suitcase; and the haunting book of poetry from Róisín Tierney, Tiger Moth, first launched in London on April 5th. 

What to Put in a Suitcase  by  Liz McSkeane

What to Put in a Suitcase  contains sixteen stories which have already attracted significant praise: 

 The world of  What to Put in a Suitcase is a very uncertain place, full of uncomfortable questions. These are stories written in spare, pared-back language, with images that startle, packed with interior monologues that are rich with insight and observation and reflect the challenges of modLiz McSkeane reads from What to Put in a Suitcase ern life: immigration, the pandemic, violence against women, society’s many inequalities.            Catherine Dunne

In the hands of Liz McSkeane, the everyday ‒ a café terrace, a deserted corridor, an oriental rug, an airport lounge ‒ can be abruptly transformed into a site of conflict and menace. Always meticulous in her choice of language, these stories show her skill in evoking our primal emotions.     David Butler

This is a brilliant, incisive collection of contemporary short stories, startling and unsettling in their profound reflections on the complexities of modern life.               Lisa Harding

Readers who would like to get a taster of the collection can read  A Hot Coffee which appeared in The Irish Times Online on Christmas Day 2021; and another story, Lebensraum, which appeared in Books Ireland Magazine in March. 

Tiger Moth  by  Róisín Tierney

roisin tierney at dublin launch of Tiger MothRóisín Tierney who was born in Dublin, has lived in Ireland, Spain and is now based in London. Her fourth collection, Tiger Moth has been widely praised and very favourably reviewed:

These unsettling, dark lyrics have a wonderful verbal energy; a mythic imagination. Snowberries have a ‘pale gleam’, a ‘halo’, a texture like ‘a mortician gently filling a bruise.’ Insects and birds come as harbingers, as though from another world, and are both read as symbols and also dexterous in their evasion of the speaker’s quest for applied meaning. Transit, poem by Róisín TierneyThrough a careful balancing, Tierney manages to chart the mind’s search for significance with poems seeking similarities between the natural world and the traumas of human life.    Seán Hewitt in The Irish Times

There are poems in Tiger Moth that attend to the natural world with a close, exacting sensibility; others bring a fine, lyric vitality to narratives of childhood and elegies for a sister – a looking back that is clear-eyed, loving, unsentimental, and redemptive.    Greta Stoddart

 

                                                  Here is one of the magical poems from Tiger Moth.

 

 

Highlights of Joint Book Launch Poetry & Short Stories!

Liz McSkeane and Roisin Tierney at October 5th launch 2022
Liz and Róisín, ‘Suitcase’ & ‘Tiger Moth’ launch 2022

Roisin Tierney and friends Tiger Moth Dublin launch 2022

 

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