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Monday, August 19th • 6:30 PM ET / 11:30 PM IST via Zoom
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Aoife Lyall’s The Day Before beautifully captures the ordinary moments in life that crystallise in the face of crisis and threat. Focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, these intimate and meticulous poems mark the lived experience of someone who must navigate a world she no longer understands, exploring first steps and last breaths, milestones, millstones, emigration, fly-tipping and the entire world to be found in the space behind the front door.
Tender, challenging, and historically significant, The Day Before asks what it means when home is the one place you cannot leave, and the one place you cannot go.
The Day Before is Aoife Lyall’s second collection, following her widely praised debut, Mother, Nature, which was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award in Scotland's National Book Awards in 2021
‘Her theme is ‘heaven in the ordinary’ – moments of illumination in everyday life. Written during the pandemic (chillingly evoked in the poem ‘Moss’), these moments become necessary for survival. There’s an imagist precision here, with real emotional power.’ – Graeme Richardson, The Sunday Times, on The Day Before
‘The poems in the book ask important, challenging questions of lives lived in the face of existential crises and threats.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, on The Day Before
'These are musical poems of freshness and power, balancing technical skill with emotional depth... Child Ballad is my book of the year.' --Graeme Richardson, Sunday Times
About the Author
Aoife Lyall (née Griffin) was born in Dublin in 1987. She earned her BA in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin, before reading her MPhil in Medieval Literature at St John’s, University of Cambridge, and gaining her PGDE (English) at the University of Aberdeen. She was awarded an Emerging Scottish Writer residency by Cove Park in 2020 and was twice shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards. Her poems have also been shortlisted in the Wells Festival of Literature Open Poetry Competition and the Jane Martin Poetry Prize.
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