"Ruth O’Callaghan’s work is wide-ranging in subject and versatile in form. I particularly enjoy her meditative and humane poems on human relationships."
Connie Bensley on Unportioned
"These are poems that confront the worst that life has to show and tell us with a dedication to truths most of us never have the courage to face up to. Only a poet, and probably only a woman poet who has looked unflinchingly at the extremes of good and evil and yet retained faith in an ultimate good, could have written them."
Anne Stevenson on Vortices
"Sharp and compassionate, not in any easy general way, but through an understanding of what confronts us both in nature and our lives, the language beautifully heard, packed and measured."
George Szirtes on An Unfinished Sufficiency
Prologue: Autopsy 11
from Unfinished Sufficiency (Salmon Poetry, 2015)
A Calculation of Dark 13
Whereupon 14
Alterations 15
Bury your own dead 16
Narrative 17
Vasilije: Christmas Eve 18
Safari 19
Stopping Place 20
Of No Tomorrow 21
Subsequent 22
from A Lope of Time (Shoestring, 2009; reprinted 2011)
Villanelle – Pour Wine 25
Visiting Time 26
Letters in a Time of Nest Building 27
Abendbrot 28
Villanelle – Knew Her 29
Apricots 30
Incident in a Small Community 31
What she said 32
Inventory 33
She hung the cord 34
from Where Acid has Etched (bluechrome, 2007)
Ways of Grieving 37
Entering Alzheimers 38
Chronicle 39
Killing Time 40
Words of Water 41
Bare light 42
Cloths 43
from The Silence Unheard (Shoestring, 2013)
Filament 45
The Garden 46
Naissance 47
Scar 48
Transience 49
Night Garden 50
Brink 51
That Particular Coat 52
Child Game 53
Chelsea – ’60s 54
Ghazal: For Certain 55
Slievemore: Deserted Village – Achill 56
Two Bays – Achill 57
Market – Achill 58
Cherry 59
from Wringing Blood (Salmon Poetry, 2018)
Antecedent 61
In Absentia 62
from Vortices (Shoestring, 2015)
Auspices 73
Blauschein 74
Source 75
Re-Creation 76
Death 77
Threshold 78
Dampen the Fire 79
Unportioned 81
Prodigal 82
View
Stray 83
Evanescent? 84
Prescience? 85
Always Dog 86
Firsts 87
Untitled 1 88
Untitled 2 89
Release 90
Locomotive Acts 91
Where? 92
After Her 93
Party 94
Returning 95
Encounter 97
Stable 98
Declension 99
Closure 100
Negation 101
Precipitation 102
Glass 103
Guest 104
Pliny: The Weight of Happiness 105
Beach Huts 106
Hospice 107
Beggared 108
Epilogue: To Whom It May Concern 111
About the author 113
