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Waiting for My Clothes
Leanne O'Sullivan was born in 1983, and comes from the Beara peninsula in West Cork. She received an MA in English from University College, Cork in 2006. The winner – while still in her teens – of several of Ireland's poetry competitions, including the Seacat, Davoren Hanna and RTE Rattlebag Poetry Slam, she has since published four collections with Waiting for My Clothes (2004), The Hag of Beara (2009), The Mining Road (2013) and A Quarter of an Hour (2018). Waiting for My Clothes, her first collection, traces a deeply personal journey, from the traumas of eating disorder and low self-esteem to the saving powers of love and positive awareness. Leanne O’Sullivan has been writing poetry since she was 12, and began these poems not thinking they would ever form part of a book, but ‘writing down the reasons I should live for’ and then ‘becoming addicted to looking at things to find the beauty in them’.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 12, 2018
Exquisitely raw. The first collection from one of my favorite poets reveals the shining fierceness of a young woman coming of age in contemporary Ireland, in a body that seems to inhabit her, eating away at her sanity. It is hard to get one's head around the age of the poet who created such stanzas as
I love to hurl my body in to the ocean,
gliding over the pier. As if a God
had let me fall I am cauht
then saved that deep, pure, well
of another life, the low hun of ita round me,
seeping inside me like a spear to an egg
Much of this collection centers on a deeply personal crisis, the range of psychological disorders centered around eating habits and body image. It is agony to read these poems that put us face to cold bathroom tile or hospital bed or mother's arms, as a young woman slowly disappears into a disease.
The dim moon of my body is shocked
by pale shore of arms and neck and face,
made paler still by moonlight and stars.
At midnight the bathroom is hushed.
ingrained in the circle of my dead gaze
the toilet stops hissing. Innocent
as a lunatic I knelt hours ago before it,
hearing a skinny saint rave within me-
and the reward for this perceived dysmorphia is societal applause:
Sweet emptiness, women glide towards her
as if on air, loving bone better than hunger.
How did you lose it Your hand exquisite as sapphire,
the heart drumming like a tap-dancer's shoes _
you look so well! And thinner still, a daughter,
a sister, as scholar, she is not there.
And yet, as its heart, this collection is fortified by the foundation and love of a family, a mother, father, sisters, brothers and grandparents, pure and righteous in its faith and singularity. It is breathtaking to behold. This familial love is a young girl's salvation.
When I remember my sixteenth year
I hear my grandmother telling me of selkies,
seals that took the form of women on land,
letting fall their smooth skin in the shore,
bathing and dancing in moonlight with their new bodies.
of her little sister, the poet writes:
My God, I love this child, one knee
raised as if she is kneeling before
her listener, the steady throb
of pryer from her mouth, wrist,
palm, offering what she knows,
lying in utter abandon with the sheets
thrown off her, as if she's driving way
anything that might smother her,
her chest rising in righteousness, her hands
uplifted like one who hasn't given enough.
and of her brother,
I look into your silky eyes, seeing myself
in you, seeing you in myself, the same blood.
You top my cigarette, holding me
and saying, These will kill you.
I give to you, you take from me,
you hold me, but I steady you.
I am transformed by these poems, shaken, bestirred, inspired, devastated and uplifted. Leanne O'Sullivan writes the sacred and profane with such delicacy and grace. This is not to be missed.
I love to hurl my body in to the ocean,
gliding over the pier. As if a God
had let me fall I am cauht
then saved that deep, pure, well
of another life, the low hun of ita round me,
seeping inside me like a spear to an egg
Much of this collection centers on a deeply personal crisis, the range of psychological disorders centered around eating habits and body image. It is agony to read these poems that put us face to cold bathroom tile or hospital bed or mother's arms, as a young woman slowly disappears into a disease.
The dim moon of my body is shocked
by pale shore of arms and neck and face,
made paler still by moonlight and stars.
At midnight the bathroom is hushed.
ingrained in the circle of my dead gaze
the toilet stops hissing. Innocent
as a lunatic I knelt hours ago before it,
hearing a skinny saint rave within me-
and the reward for this perceived dysmorphia is societal applause:
Sweet emptiness, women glide towards her
as if on air, loving bone better than hunger.
How did you lose it Your hand exquisite as sapphire,
the heart drumming like a tap-dancer's shoes _
you look so well! And thinner still, a daughter,
a sister, as scholar, she is not there.
And yet, as its heart, this collection is fortified by the foundation and love of a family, a mother, father, sisters, brothers and grandparents, pure and righteous in its faith and singularity. It is breathtaking to behold. This familial love is a young girl's salvation.
When I remember my sixteenth year
I hear my grandmother telling me of selkies,
seals that took the form of women on land,
letting fall their smooth skin in the shore,
bathing and dancing in moonlight with their new bodies.
of her little sister, the poet writes:
My God, I love this child, one knee
raised as if she is kneeling before
her listener, the steady throb
of pryer from her mouth, wrist,
palm, offering what she knows,
lying in utter abandon with the sheets
thrown off her, as if she's driving way
anything that might smother her,
her chest rising in righteousness, her hands
uplifted like one who hasn't given enough.
and of her brother,
I look into your silky eyes, seeing myself
in you, seeing you in myself, the same blood.
You top my cigarette, holding me
and saying, These will kill you.
I give to you, you take from me,
you hold me, but I steady you.
I am transformed by these poems, shaken, bestirred, inspired, devastated and uplifted. Leanne O'Sullivan writes the sacred and profane with such delicacy and grace. This is not to be missed.
January 7, 2020
I love Leanne O'Sullivan's poetry. I read her second book first, and they are two very different poetic narratives, but her voice is strong in each collection. This first collection is a very personal journey through an eating disorder, growing up, stuggling with self-esteem, and love. O'Sullivan balances well her imagery and narrative elements in each poem. She speaks from the heart; it is clear that many of these poems come from outpouring of the soul and as therapy for the mind - a way of putting down thoughts and memories to get them out of her head. Although she speaks of memories from childhood and young adulthood, her voice is never childish. She has very maturely taken on these memories to present in her narrative.
July 3, 2024
Loved this collection of short poems, by Cork's own Leanne O' Sullivan. It details graphic scenes of sexual assault, bullying, the author's changing sense-of-self and demographic that she constructs of her every-day life. She recounts memories from her childhood, her battle with mental illness and her desire to make a change. Beautiful and worth every read.
October 25, 2011
I enjoyed this collection - maybe because I work with teenagers and it outlines many of the problems of growing up - not that older people don't have some of these things to wrestle with but food disorders, questions of identity etc. often surface in adolescence. I really liked the collection. If only exam boards and government did not have so much control on what we teacjh these days - otherwise I would have taken some of these poems into the classroom. Long live poetry and the autonomy of the teacher, down strict control and poetry police.
May 13, 2014
These poems focus on mental health, family, growing up, religion, and more. Each one is poignant and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. As someone who is not a huge fan of poetry, I found these works very engaging and interesting.
April 17, 2011
"I clung to the covenant like clingfilm / over a rib and heaved her hungers." 18
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews