Shark Nursery
Eigse Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2018
"The Shark Nursery" consists of three interlocking parts: poems arising directly from lockdown, poems about lives lived in an online reality, and animal poems. The animal poems draw on the rich tradition of animals in Irish poetry and myth. From the wolf's touch to the rat's tweet, animals and fish refuse to accept the roles human beings impose on them. The rat tells us his ancestor was famous for eating the vellum of the Book of Leinster and helping us to date it. This is based on analyses of droppings found on old manuscripts for the purposes of dating and authentication. No-one thanked him, he says, not even a mention in a footnote. The animals find new language in the face of contemporary perils. In a space before noise begins tigers visit cities and a white leopard sits on a lawn in Suburbia. In the strange, almost hermetically sealed world portrayed in the "Ballad of Googletown" – an eerie, genuine ballad, where the familiar tropes and refrains of ballad are hung out to dry – lives are lived online, virtually no social interaction is necessary:
"...cars are in the drive
And the bees are in the hive
They say the kids are safe inside
In Googletown"
"The Shark Nursery" consists of three interlocking parts: poems arising directly from lockdown, poems about lives lived in an online reality, and animal poems. The animal poems draw on the rich tradition of animals in Irish poetry and myth. From the wolf's touch to the rat's tweet, animals and fish refuse to accept the roles human beings impose on them. The rat tells us his ancestor was famous for eating the vellum of the Book of Leinster and helping us to date it. This is based on analyses of droppings found on old manuscripts for the purposes of dating and authentication. No-one thanked him, he says, not even a mention in a footnote. The animals find new language in the face of contemporary perils. In a space before noise begins tigers visit cities and a white leopard sits on a lawn in Suburbia. In the strange, almost hermetically sealed world portrayed in the "Ballad of Googletown" – an eerie, genuine ballad, where the familiar tropes and refrains of ballad are hung out to dry – lives are lived online, virtually no social interaction is necessary:
"...cars are in the drive
And the bees are in the hive
They say the kids are safe inside
In Googletown"
About the author
Mary O'Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland, and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at the Universidade Nova there. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cuirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the author of its educational programme. She taught on the MA programmes for Writing and Education in the Arts at NUIGalway for ten years, held the Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2013, and has held Residencies in Paris, Tarragona, New York, NUI Galway, as well as in Derry, Belfast. She is active in environmental education, specifically marine. She is a member of Aosdana and has won a number of awards for her poetry, including the 2016 Arts Council University of Limerick Writer's Fellowship. She writes and broadcasts for RTE Radio regularly.