VENUS IN PINK MARBLE –
Released from Hedgehog Poetry Press 8th September, 2020.
If you would like a first edition, with pretty pink end papers you can order here
Following the success of her thematically focused pamphlet Memory Forest, Gaynor Kane’s debut full collection of poems opens outwards as she explores her personal history.
Venus in pink marble takes the reader on a narrative journey from heritage and place, through family and relationships, to poetry inspired by culture.
Venus in pink marble is poet and public servant, protector and rebel, proposition and paradox, with feminine strength.
Here’s what two writers thought of the collection:
In Venus in pink marble, Kane takes the reader on an honest journey through her own personal history and experiences. It is at once powerful and far reaching, unafraid to tackle big political themes or to offer a tender and loving exploration of family and relationships. The final section includes bold and imaginative perspectives on artwork moving the poems from inward to outward.
Eileen Carney Hulme, author of Stroking the Air (Bluechrome), The Space Between Rain (Indigo Dreams) and The Stone Messenger (Indigo Dreams).
Kane’s poems are Ulster poems; authentic, lived, and as intimate as Super 8 films. Close reading gives us glimpses of the domestic and the near-past, reel on reel, frame by frame. As readers we are inside the poems, part of a narrative distinctly of place, of community, and of the familial. Days out, work, ancestry, landscape; these things are peopled with the weight of history and happenstance. The context she exposes is affectionate, but it is always also navigating rules, code and the complexities of a place and people riven with its distinct, hardwired contradictions; the past and the contemporary, cheek by jowl.
Maria McManus, author of Available Light (Arlen House), We are Bone (Lagan Press), The Cello Suites (Lagan Press) and Reading the Dog (Lagan Press).
The Secret Bookshelf in Carrickfergus is stocking signed copies and here is a reading and discussion I had with Jo Zebedee the owner
I also recorded a launch video with the help of Dublin based poet Damien B Donnelly and you can watch it here.
The 2 minute blooper reel is comedy gold!
Thanks to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for help funding my professional development. The grant went towards time to write and mentoring and I’m truly grateful for the opportunity.