Dedication to Drowning

In this raw and moving debut chapbook, Maeve McKenna dives into the multitudes of womanhood: a mother, unmothered; a lover, alone; a child, now aged. She flings the cover off pain that would otherwise remain hidden and unspoken, exposing the most intimate parts of herself. In doing so, she invites the reader to embrace their own vulnerabilities, calling, "Let's assemble our bodies, limb to limb against/the walls of unoccupied margins, hope pointed/like the scope of a firing squad...I am writing it for you. For me."

"Prepare to be undone. Maeve McKenna's debut pamphlet 'A Dedication to Drowning' will leave you gasping for breath, head and heart battered and bruised by its ferocious, unflinching energy. Here is a poet that does not shy away from the hard edges of life where each day is birth and a burial. From the first line Your son is trying to kill you, the reader is drawn into a Pan's Labyrinth of strange and wondrous scenarios and images. Here is the poet-sister of Eleanor Hooker and Dorothy Molloy, courageous and wild, unafraid to follow where the words take her. I am writing it for you. For me.

Anne Tannam, author of 'Twenty-six Letters of a New Alphabet'.

"Just as material under stress distorts (experiences strain) to counterbalance the applied force, Maeve McKenna's words contort with tension keeping the reader on edge, the possibility that everything might snap and spring back upon us. But the poems are finely wrought, and the tension contained, leaving us invigorated in the wake of their nervous energy - their honesty and vitality wounds and heals by turns. A must-read debut."

Gerard Beirne, Author of 'Games of Chance: A Gambler's Manual' (poetry).