Alvy Carragher
Poetry
"She has the gist, but not the knack,
the gist is building with bravery
to take a tree stripped of all its dignity,
then put it back together tenderly."
In Alvy Carragher’s compelling new collection, What Remains the Same, journeys are strivings to escape. Rooms hold ‘the shadow / of an old home, another country’ while, in the book’s title poem, a young woman ‘must swallow pain, remain silent. / This is the shape of her life.’ History hounds the writer’s heels and ancient hurts return as she searches for a voice and for forgiveness.
These poems contain a gamut of emotions — from the kindness of a stranger on an aeroplane to ‘Aftermath’ in which a character ‘wanted to hurt him’. In work that tells ‘the whole house deaf / to what it was that went on / in the rooms of its daughters’ What Remains the Same is a distressing book. But through the illumination of dark passages in her own and in our country’s woes Alvy Carragher, in poems touched by something like love, presents a tale of survival and a guiding light.
Cover image: ‘Orange Blossom’ (2019)
by Michael Kane
About me
Born in 1989, I'm an Irish poet who lives, works and writes in Dublin. I grew up in Ireland along the River Shannon in both Galway and Tipperary. I've since lived for stints in Louisiana, South Korea, and Canada. My third full collection of poetry 'What Remains the Same' (2024) is published by The Gallery Press with support from the Irish Arts Council. I've also published a children's novel.
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