Storm Damage weaves personal, historical and mythological threads to create a book that recognises and celebrates the power of words, not least in times of personal and collective challenge. Whether charting the events of her own family life or responding to records in Dublin’s North Inner City Folklore Collection, the poems and songs contained here have the shadow, and occasionally the light, of history cast over them. For a book in which the word ‘home’ makes frequent appearances, Cullen’s world is never closed but always open to the outsider, the less fortunate and the downtrodden. Health concerns give Storm Damage an added resonance, but Cullen’s power is as a singer of hurts – and of salves – beyond the merely personal, and in this energetic and engaged new work, she takes to her role with a persuasive and light-footed passion.