Nuala O'Connor, photo by Úna O'Connor
Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her poetry and fiction have been widely published, anthologised, and won many literary awards. Her sixth novel Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was nominated for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for Eason Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her novel NORA (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, was published by Arlen House in late March 2025. Her website is here.
About Menagerie, by Nuala O'Connor
Menagerie is Nuala’s fifth poetry collection, and her first since 2011. It is a book that centres on casting a compassionate, language-loving eye on the animal world, on neurodivergence, on writing, on marriage and familial love, and on art and politics. Carl Phillips, writing in the Irish Times said Menagerie has ‘a warm feelingful generosity of vision and a distant, diagnostic eye … a collection which is at once involving and clear-sighted.’
Menagerie is Nuala’s fifth poetry collection, and her first since 2011. It is a book that centres on casting a compassionate, language-loving eye on the animal world, on neurodivergence, on writing, on marriage and familial love, and on art and politics. Carl Phillips, writing in the Irish Times said Menagerie has ‘a warm feelingful generosity of vision and a distant, diagnostic eye … a collection which is at once involving and clear-sighted.’
From Menagerie
Plum
A poem can’t take the place of a plum.
- Sylvia Plath
one thumb stroke and you are ruby-skinned again,
a firm bed for lips to wrap around.
But you are a frightening prospect;
your skin might make teeth ache, your flesh
may pull a stripe of bitterness over my tongue.
Still, I am willing to plunge in.
I take you in my mouth,
for better, for worse.
Psychopomp
I take you in my mouth,
for better, for worse.
Psychopomp
Desire stretches, elongates, it is cat-paw dogged
and I give in, allow my fingers to scroll and tap.
I want more basalt and gold, seed-pearl and jet,
more hair wefted through its own warp, the strands
of the inscrutable dead, snapped behind back-glass.
and I give in, allow my fingers to scroll and tap.
I want more basalt and gold, seed-pearl and jet,
more hair wefted through its own warp, the strands
of the inscrutable dead, snapped behind back-glass.
My treasure box is a tomb of sepia strangers
but I dreamt my mournful trinkets were stolen,
all gone, those turquoise and vulcanite sarcophagi
meant for lapels and bosom-nesting chains –
grim thieves mocked and saw me off, empty-handed.
So here I am again, haunting online marketplaces,
a banshee keening unknowable but felt losses,
a reaper in search of fresh souls to stack,
in order to stuff my communal vault,
with memento mori, with memento vivere.
a banshee keening unknowable but felt losses,
a reaper in search of fresh souls to stack,
in order to stuff my communal vault,
with memento mori, with memento vivere.
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