Jaki McCarrick’s debut poetry collection, Sweeney as a Girl, opens with the title poem which recasts the crazed king of Irish legend as a modern-day female struggling to cope with the distractions and pressures of our age.
London-born, and raised there and in Co. Louth, again and again McCarrick is drawn to the exploration of difference, of otherness, her keen eye seeing never just place alone, for instance, but glimpses of the longer narratives (intact or otherwise) of connection and belonging.
When I was there I would think of here,
the salt-blown air of this unregenerate town
where alternate views of history can be found.
(‘Home Ground’)
Throughout, the various roles of daughter, writer, friend, lover and neighbour are interrogated, with more than once an unfamiliar voice (from mythology or history or the world of art) delivering a surprising new perpsective on what we thought we knew or, as so often, take for granted.
‘In Sweeney as A Girl, Jaki McCarrick’s delicate, open-weave lines are the perfect containers for the gleanings of her fresh, elastic mind; her arresting phrasings are as gorgeous and accurate as the details. This is a rich, original, and energetic collection, concerned with modernity as much as memory-mining. Over and again readers will return to, and bask in, the electrifying language and unique spirit of these poems. Just beautiful.’
— Nuala O’Connor, author of Menagerie‘The richness of these poems can’t be underestimated. Their earthy precision speaks against the tawdry and crass, whether we speak of a mythical, female Sweeney, or of family matters. McCarrick sees the complex humanity (and sometimes the lack of it) in situations, places, in people. Family is returned to, emigrating and returning, unpicked affectionately, never judged. Other presences from Irish legend become part of the contemporary and vital. Language dances in McCarrick’s hands, and her writing is beautiful, electric and essential.’
— Mary O’Donnell, poet, novelist, short story writer“Sweeney as a Girl is an impressive, multifaced, and rich debut collection from one of contemporary Ireland’s most interesting writers.”
— Adrienne Leavy, Reading Ireland
Sweeney as a Girl
Up here with the crags and windbush
I look down on the amber world
and I say truthfully to you,
I do not miss it.
I hate its vacuous Facebook self.
I hate its plagues and smoke and mirrors.
For I have come to love
what my grandparents had
and my parents abandoned:
the quiet, wild earth.
In the brief time I am here
I have the real earth,
without double-glazing;
the freedom of the broad valleys
without Capitalism.
The hair on my head
is pure white wire,
my smile a row of crags.
All over Oriel
I seek out the sparse woods
and miss nothing of that life
down there in the town,
only my dark hair,
a lover’s hand to stroke it.
(In the medieval Irish work ‘Buile Suibhne’, Sweeney is a king exiled to the wilds of the north-east of Ireland.)
Sweeney as a Girl
Jaki McCarrick
140 x 216 mm, 76 pp
ISBN 9781915629388 HB
ISBN 9781915629395 PB
May 2025
