The Shark Nursery

The Shark Nursery is a collection of poems that respond to a disturbed world, drawing on the tradition of animals in Irish poetry and myth. It fuses mythic with modern elements, weaving between human, animal, and metaphysical realms. The poems explore the experience of lockdown, lives lived in an online reality, and the animal world. O Malley's animals find new language in the face of contemporary perils. The Ballad of Googletown is a strange, sealed-off world where lives are lived online and social interaction is unnecessary. The book promises truthfulness, seriousness, playfulness, hesitating and hard-won wisdom, and the beauty of plain words placed in careful order.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 86 pages
Publication date: 27 June 2024
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd

The poems of "The Shark Nursery" respond to a disturbed world, encompassing the experience of lockdown, online reality, and the animal world. Drawing on the tradition of animals in Irish poetry and myth, the animal poems challenge human-imposed roles and find new language in the face of contemporary perils. The poems weave between human, animal, and metaphysical realms, creating a space before noise begins. In the strange, sealed-off world of "The Ballad of Googletown," lives are lived online and social interaction is unnecessary. The book promises truthfulness, seriousness, playfulness, hesitating wisdom, a pushback against nonsense or sentiment, the beauty of plain words, and the bliss of musicality.

Weight: 110g
Dimension: 134 x 215 x 8 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800174146