"Nourishment celebrates the feasts, and mourns the fasts, of deep sexual love. Essential nourishment indeed: for this is what it is to be fully human, to rejoice in the radiant dance of one's body with another's, and to sing soul unto soul. Anne Hartigan's work has always been acutely tuned to the sacredness of the sensual. Her rhythms spring from the page, re-inventing themselves with echoes of chants and prayers and charms. These poems reinvent and rewrite the erotic before our eyes, and 'rinse and wring the ear' with their rare emotional intelligence and compassion."
Catherine Byron
"In Nourishment Hartigan explores the possibilities of love, sex and desire. The age-old association of food and sexuality is inscribed with the sacred connotations of a 'holy sin', a private ritual that encompasses physical and emotional healing as well as the creative possibilities of words rooted in bodily experience. Love is both constructed by the social and unquestionably ruled by the needs of the individual. Hartigan's poems accomplish the difficult task of writing about love without ever falling prey to sentimentality. At times purely physical, at times deeply in love, her voice contributes to the dismantling of old-fashioned conceptions of female sexuality. These poems are a treat for the senses and present Anne Hartigan as undoubtedly one of the most talented voices in contemporary Irish poetry."
Luz Mar Gonzalez Arias
Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a prize-winning poet, playwright and painter. She trained as a painter at Reading University, England. She returned to Co Louth, Ireland, in 1962 with her husband Tim Hartigan where they farmed and reared their six children. She now lives in Dublin. To Keep The Light Burning, her sixth collection of poetry, was published by Salmon in 2008. Her other Salmon collections are Nourishment (2005), Immortal Sins (1993), the award winning long poem with Anne's drawings, Now is a Moveable Feast (1991), all published by Salmon. Her prose work includes Clearing The Space, the Why of Writing, published in 1996 by Salmon Publishing.
Catherine Byron
"In Nourishment Hartigan explores the possibilities of love, sex and desire. The age-old association of food and sexuality is inscribed with the sacred connotations of a 'holy sin', a private ritual that encompasses physical and emotional healing as well as the creative possibilities of words rooted in bodily experience. Love is both constructed by the social and unquestionably ruled by the needs of the individual. Hartigan's poems accomplish the difficult task of writing about love without ever falling prey to sentimentality. At times purely physical, at times deeply in love, her voice contributes to the dismantling of old-fashioned conceptions of female sexuality. These poems are a treat for the senses and present Anne Hartigan as undoubtedly one of the most talented voices in contemporary Irish poetry."
Luz Mar Gonzalez Arias
Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a prize-winning poet, playwright and painter. She trained as a painter at Reading University, England. She returned to Co Louth, Ireland, in 1962 with her husband Tim Hartigan where they farmed and reared their six children. She now lives in Dublin. To Keep The Light Burning, her sixth collection of poetry, was published by Salmon in 2008. Her other Salmon collections are Nourishment (2005), Immortal Sins (1993), the award winning long poem with Anne's drawings, Now is a Moveable Feast (1991), all published by Salmon. Her prose work includes Clearing The Space, the Why of Writing, published in 1996 by Salmon Publishing.