Nessa O?Mahony?s fifth volume of poetry explores many of her signature
themes developed over a 20-year period. She writes with renewed urgency
about life and love, continues her preoccupation with history (the
hidden and overt), questions cultural identity and demonstrates her keen
affinity with nature and landscape as well as exploring the liminal
areas between loss and gain. At the heart of this new collection is a
central sequence, the Hollow Woman poems, that explore O?Mahony?s recent
scrape with ovarian cancer, an experience that provoked profound
questions about the essence of womanhood and female identity when faced
with existential threat. But more than this is O?Mahony?s enduring
exploration of the human condition in a poetic voice that is quiet,
subtle and occasionally devastating.