Louise G Cole

Under the Influence takes the reader into the sometimes comical and frequently heart-breaking relationship between the author and her elderly, care-homed mother. The sequence of free-verse poems comments on the lasting influence of a flame-haired, cabbage-water drinking seamstress on the child who was told she had a face only a mother could love. Included is 'Fur Coat and No Knickers' an award-winning poem which has struck a cord with many about the occasionally humorous frustrations shared by frail elderly parents and their necessarily resilient adult children. Under the Influence received a commendation in the 2021 Fool for Poetry Competition run by Munster Literature Centre, Ireland.

Louise G Cole writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry, and has been published, and won or been shortlisted, in various literary competitions. She was nominated for Hennessy Literary Awards in 2015 and 2018, and has won the Strokestown Poetry Festival Roscommon Poets' Prize, the Hanna Greally Literary Award, the HE Bates Short Story Competition, and the I Am Dublin Flash Fiction competition, amongst others. Originally from Worcestershire in England (home of Worcester Sauce and Elgar), she now lives in County Roscommon in the west of Ireland (home of Atlantic gales and rain).