Planting a Pear Tree by Helen Dempsey

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The last word in Planting a Pear Tree is ‘home’, but the book is an interesting mix of nostalgia and future-thought. The poet is acutely aware of ecological change and social complexities, but reversion to history or myth, as in Canute or Manannán, is never an escape. It seems that every time she takes pen (or keyboard) to poem, her analytical faculty marries her awareness and the poem follows its own necessity for elegance. Immersed in the contemporary and its literary precedents, observing transience and permanence, serving the craft of poetry with careful and often gleeful structures, this collection takes you through time and the thinking mind, and across continents.

– Máighréad Medbh

 

Description

Dublin-born Helen Dempsey lives in Rush, Co. Dublin and has had poems published in anthologies, magazines, online, local radio, readings and open mic sessions. She won Fingal Libraries’ Poetry Day competition 2018, 2021; a commended and highly commended award in the Jonathan Swift Poetry Competition 2017 and winner in 2023. She was shortlisted for the Bridport prize, 2018 and 2023. Most recently her poems have appeared in Live Encounters, A New Ulster and The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology, Hold Open the Door. A member of the Ardgillan Creative Writers’ Group, she holds a Masters Degree in Poetry Studies from D.C.U. Planting a Pear Tree is her debut collection.