The January Poetry Book Group will be meeting via Zoom
Monday, January 16th • 6:30 PM ET / 11:30 PM GMT via Zoom
Session open to all: no registration required.
Click on this link to join the Zoom session
Find out about Solas Nua's Poetry Book Group and titles list
Join the Book Group's Facebook Group here!
Victoria Kennefick's daring first book, Eat or We Both Starve, draws readers into seemingly recognisable set-pieces - the family home, the shared meal, the rituals of historical occasions, desire - but Kennefick forges this material into new shapes, making them viable again for exploring what it is to live with the past - and not to be consumed by it.
Rebecca Goss writes: 'Victoria Kennefick writes with a fresh urgency, giving us poems that are honest and fearless. She once said: "Poetry has saved my life, made my life. Reading and writing it have taught me bravery and discipline." Kennefick is unafraid to explore bereavement, sex and the female body in her poetry. She writes with a visceral originality. Her poems are rich with physical sensations. She is able to find beauty in the big subjects like sorrow and desire, offering us the finest, most startling details. Her identity as a young Irish woman is hugely important to her, something she explores with intelligence and candour. I have always felt there is nothing Victoria could not tackle. The scope in her work is exhilarating.'
Winner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize 2022
Awarded the Emerging Writer of the Year in the Dalkey Literary Awards 2022
Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2022
Shortlisted for the Butler Literary Prize 2022
Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2021
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2021
An Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2021
A Guardian Book of the Year 2021
A White Review Book of the Year 2021
A Sunday Independent (Dublin) Book of the Year 2021
A Telegraph Best New Poetry Books for Christmas 2021
About the Author
Victoria Kennefick is a poet, writer and teacher from Shanagarry, Co. Cork now based in Co. Kerry. She holds a doctorate in English from University College Cork and studied at Emory University and Georgia College and State University as part of a Fulbright Scholarship.
A recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, she has also received bursaries from Kerry County Council and Words Ireland. She was a co-host of the Unlaunched Books Podcast and is on the committee of Listowel Writers’ Week, Ireland’s longest-running literary festival.
All events are listed in Eastern Time and Greenwich Mean Time.
