"Joan McBreen is a phenomenon... This book introduces her fresh, intense voice to the American reader. There is a clarity to the details McBreen chooses to relate that makes her work seem utterly earnest and sincere...

Here is an Ireland of today... informed by the interweaving crosses of St. Brigid's Day and dark shawls of island women.Let us hope McBreen find a relationship here as she has accross the waters."

Pat Monaghan, Booklist

The Forty Poems in this first book by an emerging Irish writer explore a variety of traditional and contemporary themes that combine to create the modern Irish consciousness.

Beginning with poems that look back forty years or more on a childhood spent in the fabled county of Sligo, the book moves effortlessly to present-day issues of raising a family and making sense of the political turmoil unique to the county.

Throughout the collection, McBreen also grapples with the contemporary Irish woman's fight to assert her independence, asserting her own generous autonomy in the process.



McBreen's readers will quickly recognize the foundation of one of the world's great oral traditions behind these evocative lyrics, and they will come away knowing much more about everyday Irish life than they did before.