The Solace of Artemis

by Paula Meehan

Patterns and patterning - cellular, celestial, social, political and personal - spin and weave through Paula Meehan's new collection of poems. From the mythic to the mundane, her attention is given over to the examination of interconnected lives - her own, the lives of her family, the human ecology of her native Dublin - and the unfolding of pattern-cycles in the non- human world.




Meehan's familiar impulse towards blessing and empathy is shadowed in these poems with a clear-sighted understanding that the human perspective is neither privileged nor superior, an awareness that much if not most of existence is indifferent to our all-too-human dramas. Nevertheless, explorations of family, of her own mortality, of the lives of long-dead tenement dwellers, shift and shine in a web of stories that speak to a stubborn human endurance that is sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic - and occasionally transcendent.




As well as new poems, this collection integrates Museum (2019), a sequence commissioned for the Dublin Tenement Museum, and For the Hungry Ghosts (2022), a poem cycle responding to the Hades episode of Joyce's Ulysses.

Genres: Poetry

164 pages, Paperback

Published November 13, 2023

About the author

Meehan studied at University College, Dublin and Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington.

She has been awarded The Martin Toonder Award (1995), The Butler Literary Award (1998), and the Denis Devlin Award (2002) for her work.

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

had to read for class. went from begrudgingly parsing through to being the number one Paula Meehan fan in a span of hours. My favorite poems were Winged Woman with Hound and Seven Stanzas for the Magdalenes.

[BeesBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore the Museum collection and her idea of dedicating a poem to each muse. Moreover, I love that she includes ancient greek words and they play a role in her poems. Her writing style is so unique, now I understand why so many Irish students are obsessed with her work!

[Ellie Wakefield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed; liked how Meehan's own history with the sides of Dublin she grew up with and their historical context were woven into the poems, especially the sonnets commissioned for the Dublin Tenement Museum.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly beautiful collection

Fav poems:
-The Celtic cross spread dictated to Paula Meehan by w.b yeats from the other side
-seven stanzas from the Magdalenes
-ballad of the fallen world
-domestic interior
-runes
-little addict
-the lionhearted
-the lovers

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection. I liked the more personal poems about Dublin and her family. There's some wonderful turns of phrase here. There's a vibrancy and warmth to many of these.