Máighréad Medbh

Time plays a major role in Imbolg, Máighréad Medbh’s eighth book of poetry, which explores a period of gestation, culminating in attempted personal change. Over the fifty days of her lockdown diary, written during March and April 2020, her feet walk around a quiet housing estate, past empty buildings and a closed-down society. Change, doubt, and fear inhabit the book in differing forms, but sensual pleasure is always in the frame, and an abiding element of play.

This highly evolved verse novel, inspired by the flamboyancy of Irish artist Pauline Bewick's art, gives epic treatment to the themes of gender, the body, time and the meaning of myth in this post-postmodern world.

The "twelve beds" in the title of this collection refer to the twelve astrological signs. The dreamer is the poet, who began by noting the stages of the moon's monthly cycle and checking whether her dreams might bear any relation to them. Would she dream of conflict when the moon was in Aries, or of love when it was in Libra? She didn't reach a scientific conclusion, but she did write the dreams as poems and found that they could be allocated thematic places within the astrological divisions. She added other poems of the night and half-light to achieve a narrative of the inner life with the zodiac as a structure, astrology having proved a very interesting map-maker in her experience. The journey in the sequence is from Cancer (home, children, tradition) to Gemini (communication, information, restlessness), a road which has also been walked by the poet's generation. The last poems in the sequence are steeped in the clamorous demands of the Celtic Tiger mentality. Maighread Medbh has been described as a "vital slam poet" and "a unique presence in the Irish poetry scene," whose 'handling of metre is competent and assured'. These poems imbue the oneiric experience with melody and inquiry, and veer close to the honesty of the subconscious itself.

Maighread Medbh was born in Newcastle West, County Limerick. Since the publication of her critically-acclaimed first collection, 'The Making of a Pagan' (Blackstaff Press), in 1990, she has become widely known as a poet who applies much creative energy to the presentation of her work in performance. She has performed, to consistently good reviews, at a large number of venues in Ireland, Great Britain, the United States, mainland Europe, and on the broadcast media."

This volume combines new collections by established authors Deirdre Brennan and Máighréad Medbh with a collection by emerging author Nuala Ní Chonchúir. The diversity of their work reveals much skill and insight with astute observations—sometimes comical, sometimes sad—on the human condition and the world around us.