The poems of Leeanne Quinn’s debut collection explore loss and memory, initially through the intimacies of a sibling relationship, later revisited from a distance. In turn, new experience becomes “the earth’s irreproachable / response to your absence”. Then, in the book’s second section, the letters of Elizabeth Bishop serve as reference and counterpoint to “this awful business of living”, in the knowledge that pain must out, and that life must go on.
Leeanne Quinn was born in Drogheda in 1978. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin. In 2008 she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, performing alongside the likes of Ailbhe Darcy, Joseph Horgan and Padraig O’Morain. In 2010 she was the recipient of an Arts Council Bursary Award. Her poems have been published in a variety of magazines and journals, including The Shop and The Stinging Fly. She lives in Dublin.