To Star the Dark

by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

The poems in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s much-anticipated new collection To Star the Dark take place in hospitals, in cellars, in Parisian parks and American laundromats, inside our screens and beyond them. Poems of blood and birdsong, of rain and desire, of aftermath and ambivalence, each spoken by a voice, which – like the starlings – sings, at once, both past and present.

Genres: Poetry, Irish Literature, Ireland, Medical

69 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2021

About the author

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a ​bilingual ​writer​,​ devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. ​A Ghost in the Throat finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as “powerful” (New York Times), “captivatingly original” (The Guardian), and a “masterpiece” (Sunday Business Post). ​A Ghost in the Throat won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2021. It is to appear in 15 further languages worldwide.
Doireann is also the author of six critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), the James Tait Black Prize (Scotland), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature​, among others.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I knelt here,
lips trembling with inherited words
and inherited fears.’

As I write this, it is a rainy St. Patrick’s Day and I can think of no better way to celebrate than to review a book of Irish poetry. To Star the Dark by poet and writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa (author of A Ghost in the Throat) is an excellent look at passion, history and the ways ‘old scars sing, even in absence.’ Ní Ghríofa has earned attention as one of Ireland’s celebrated poets, winning frequent awards and honors and the poems collected here are certainly worthy of high praise. From poems about historical events, scientific studies, heritage, love and life, Ní Ghríofa has a way of evoking deep feelings with a sparseness of words and a keen eye for imagery.

‘The Irish for history is star.
The Irish for teach is moon.
The Irish for light is loss.
The irish for secret is ruin.

Perhaps this is why
night skies catch our eye,
luring us to learn
by what light still shines.’

I have to give this book a shoutout if only because Ní Ghríofa shouts out to the entirety of Nick Cave’s album The Boatman’s Call in a poem about listening to it through a walkman in a Boston laundromat, ‘when I lived in the distance.’ This collection grounds itself to many interesting and esoteric references, such as a series of poems about marine biologist Maude Delap, a 1622 fire in the city Cork, and even a poem about a study that determent ‘parental olfactory experience influences behaviour and neural structure in subsequent generations.’ This latter poem connects to the central theme of the collection, that of a communication between past and present across the wires of heritage and history.

A Spell in Sunshine

Come spring, every new leaf
is a silk handkerchief, unfurling
itself, both new and antique,
already lifting cheery farewells,
o green, and so brief.

This is a really lovely collection, one that can hit you on the first read of each poem and then unfold in your mind revealing more and more with each revisit.In an interview with Irish Examiner, Ní Ghríofa spoke on how poetry only started to open up for her in her late 20s, having once thought it more a puzzle you had to solve than an art to experience. For this reason she says she writes her poems to be very welcoming, something to experience akin to the way one does music:

‘It took me a long time to realise that when you come to a poem, it is possible to come to it like you would with a song on the radio — to just listen to a poem, to take pleasure in the music of a poem, to read it out loud, to see what it conjures in your own imagination.’

This is certainly a collection to conjure spells in the mind as well as the heart as it traces the rivers of history into the bloodstreams of the present. A lovely little book.

4.5/5

'Only her words will do:
slips of brightness that persist,
holding our hands, even in darkness.'

[Bart Van Overmeire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only her words will do:
slips of brightness that persist,
holding our hands, even in darkness.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very lovely collection, with a lot of emotion and a lot of musicality. DNG has a way of making her internal and end rhymes sound just the right amount of sing-songy for each poem: spells sound like spells; lullabies sound like lullabies; odes and omens and confessions hold the right amount of weight, or what feels right as you read. Her poems are also incredibly visual, so the music in them sometimes works to anchor the reader to the page so they don’t float away in whatever visions she’s inspired. Each poem in this collection is wonderful, so I feel a little weird only giving it four stars—I certainly don’t have any complaints!—but I’ve been leaning so much towards collections with a clearer narrative bent lately and that’s those preferences coming through. It is really very good, and I especially appreciated some of the poems where the poet was experimenting a bit. Highly recommended!

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Like many, I discovered Ní Ghríofa through A Ghost in the Throat, a genre-bending work of feminist autofiction. I treated myself to a copy of this, her sixth poetry collection, as part of a Waterstones haul with my Christmas book token. One poem actually mentions Eibhlín Dubh, subject of A Ghost in the Throat, and the work as a whole has some of the same attributes, blending biographical portraits and historical reflection with autobiographical material.

“Two Daydreams” connects a teenager in a history exam with the generations leading back to the Famine. “An Experiment to Engineer an Inheritance of Fear” wonders if there is an inherited Irish trauma: “Give her terror in a meadow. / Bind her fear to a black potato. … / When exposed to the ancestral scent, great-grandchildren will show signs of distress.” A newborn’s stay in the NICU occasions “Seven Postcards from a Hospital” (originally addressed to Sara Baume, Ní Ghríofa reveals in the Notes). Marine biologist Maude Delap is the subject of one multi-part poem.

Sensual imagery abounds, and there are several incantatory spells, including the spring one below. My favourite poem was “Craquelure,” likening cracks in a fellow bus passenger’s phone screen to the weathering old paintings develop.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magical, imaginative collection, To Star the Dark builds on Ní Ghríofa’s previous work on themes that include birth, bodily autonomy, grief and the place of women in Irish history. Her poetry uses rhyme, assonance, repetition and rhythm to create magical soundscapes that captures the reader’s ear. This collection includes a series of spells and nocturnes that use imagistic, rhythmic language which gives a sense of invocation and enchantment. The collection also deals with the physicality of the body, from the series “Seven Postcards from a Hospital”, which explores the aftermath of a traumatic birth, to “A Jaw, Ajar”, which describes finding a famine-era jaw-bone on the site of a mass grave: the history a body holds, as well as the physical extremities it undergoes, are witnessed by the poet, and can be a source of beauty as well as one of loss. The body is a place of fertility and transcendence in “In Albumen, In Pixels, in Bricks,” in which the body carries eggs and history; and a place of betrayal and pain, in “Waking Again”, a poem dedicated to Savita Halappanavar. The collection also looks at Irish women in history, including the scientist Maude Delap, a self-educated authority on marine life, born 1866. Her history is here told in four parts, and Ní Ghríofa draws on a wealth of evocative imagery and sound to create Delap’s inner life: “Under her boat / a world / of hover / and float / of swim and flit / and gilled throats.” This collection also includes While Bleeding, a poem about “all the red / that fell into pads and rags – / the weight of red, the wait for red / that we share.” A deeply moving, imaginative and tender poem that typifies Ní Ghríofa’s work with its music and fierce autonomy. This is a collection by a skilled and subtle poet, filled with rich sound and language: highly recommended.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly stunning collection from one of the most interestingly expressive poets working today.

[Sarah O'Riordan | travelseatsreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

To Star The Dark is a beautiful and unusual collection of poetry by the wonderful Doireann Ní Ghríofa which looks at themes such as Irish history, motherhood and sexuality.

Emotionally charged with some uncomfortable moments which are beautifully contrasted by sublime captivating prose.

My Favourites
🌟 Prayer
⭐ Under The City, A Light In A Cave
✨ False Friends

Read If You Like
Haunting powerful and slightly unnerving poetry.

For Fans Of
Sara Baume, Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, Sophie White, Sarah Davis-Goff

[gab · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5* some really good poems and some average ones. excited to read more of her work

[Katie Dillon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my favorite of the collection. Exquisite storytelling about so many things: female desire, Irish history, motherhood, loneliness, aging. I devoured them all! My favorite one was the one about two daydreams.

[Hope Austin]

The most excellent collection of poetry that I have ever read.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my first book of poetry of the year, I knew I needed to reach for something luminous.

I've coveted, and finally acquired, Ní Ghríofa's A Ghost in the Throat, which I'm certain I will read frightfully soon, but I wanted to embed myself in her poems first. To Star the Dark takes your hand and leads you into the blood of things: a speaker swaddles herself in a luxurious coat while menstruating; a bruise erupts on the tiny hand of a baby whose blood is drawn for testing; a lightning cloud scorches murmurations of starlings and they fall to the earth, feather-bloodied. Yet the despair on each side of each poem's glittering edge is bladed with tenacity, with the fearsome stars of survival.

My favourite poem-sequence of the book reveals a life in four movements: Maude Delap's, an autodidact marine biologist who tracked the life cycles of jellyfish in her home island of Valentia, off the southwest Kerry coast of Ireland. Moving through the verses with curiosity, focus and all the care of a natural scientist, Ní Ghríofa does exactly what the title of this collection strives for -- she stars the dark of Maude's world, revealing it to us in pinpricks of aqueous investigation, jellyfish sting, the art of a homemade laboratory, the rhythms of a life defying convention despite being hemmed by it: and running like a through-line through all this, the urgency of discovery, the *why* of why we are here at all, the *what* of what we're here to do before we go.

Because we will go. We've got no choice about that. But my God, how we can shine before we do.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ghosts, those flames, racing up the stairs, / sending smoke through slates, / a vast constellation of sparks to star the dark. / O paraffin splash. O ash.” Doireann Ní Ghríofa is at her lyrical, musical best in To Star The Dark, her brand new poetry collection which is out on 7 April from Dedalus Press. This is another “full review to follow” situation, but here are a few things I want to say now... having read Ní Ghríofa’s two other English poetry collections, Clap and Lies, and her sensational prose work A Ghost In The Throat, I’m fully convinced that Ní Ghríofa is only getting better with each and every new body of work, more accomplished, more polished. One of the poems is a perfect easter egg for A Ghost In The Throat fans; one poem is about one of my favourite Nick Cave albums; another, ‘Seven Postcards From A Hospital’, is a haunting rumination over bodily pain and uncertainty, living in liminal spaces, and was originally written as seven postcards addressed to Sara Baume, another incredible writer. Corporeality is key — unsurprising to all who are familiar with Ní Ghríofa’s work — from a confession that “The word I hear most now is blood” to the final poem, ‘A Letter to the Stranger Who Will Dissect My Brain’, which — like the rest of the collection — transcends the body, moving through the minds of others in “synaptic flashes”, a total, enveloping light.

[Harold · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t read a whole lot of poetry, but I heard Ní Ghríofa on a podcast discussing her first work of prose, and I was moved by her words. I bought her works of poetry, of which she has three, and read this one first.

After hearing her speak on the podcast, I could only read this in her voice. That contributed a great deal to my appreciation for this. She writes on a number of topics - some seemingly mundane, such as doing the laundry, and some more abstract and emotionally charged. But she manages to communicate about even the mundane in a way that is full of energy and passion. Her poetry makes me wish I could see things through her eyes, if only for a second, and that is no small accomplishment.

I’m really looking forward to reading A Ghost in the Throat and her other poetry collections. She is immensely talented and I am in awe.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite of her poetry volumes that I've read so far. I especially appreciated her notes at the end about some of the inspirations for the poems. Standouts in the volume: "While Bleeding," a quirky poem about menstruation and the female body, "Brightening" about the burning of Anglo-Irish country homes in the 1920s, "False Friends" about the Irish language and character, and "At Derrynane, I Think of Eibhlin Dubh Again" returning to the subject of her phenomenal A Ghost in the Throat (one of the best books I've ever read). The two most memorable in my opinion are "Waking Again" about Savita Halappanavar, whose tragic, unnecessary death led to the repeal of the Irish abortion ban and "At Half Eleven..." which links strangers' glances in a crowded bar with the inferno that destroyed Cork City in 1622.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Irish poetry group read this collection this month. It is the third book by this writer we have read. It is a slight book, but one which in which even the smallest poems are rich with meaning. Ni Ghriofa writes cogently about lives of women, her own, and other women now and in the past. As one of the minority of Irish people who is fluent in the Irish language (learned as a second language), she often includes references to the language in her poems.

Anyone who has enjoyed any of Ni Ghriofa's other poetry collections or essays, should read this. Highly recommended.

[Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

God I am in love and utter awe. By the second poem I was taken back to the hours we spent studying Ní Ghríofa’s text A Ghost in the Throat with Capo.
Her writing is so haunting and I can only imagine she is just as haunted by it. I wish I could embed the force of nature into my writing the way she does.
Would absolutely love to understand the full context of each work and she has a great notes section to jumpstart just that :)

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ni Griofa's poetry comes from the body, the sky, the eyes, the bones, and it resonates and vibrates there as I read. The subtle rhymes, the interwoven images, even the way the poems are laid out in the collection are all done with such gentle but powerful meaning. I am in awe. I am starred.

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first book of poetry this year and it stunned as I rode to Kilkenny. From the fires of Cork city, to the fires of mansions burning, to the fires of orgasm and love buried quietly in a garden, I roamed the countryside alone — together. I cannot wait to read more work.

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best poetry I’ve ever read. I loved the range of subjects covered in the poems. Utterly brilliant.

[Emma Filtness · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous mix of forms and modes - prose poem, lyric, poem as prayer and spell...I was particularly impressed by the poet's ear for sound patterning and the subtle use of rhyme.

[Alex Rosenfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ghost and this very moment wed into a beautiful collection.

[Xenia Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted, profound and brave poems from this gifted lyrical poet, at her best when she delves deeper into the layers of her experiences.

[Méabh McDonnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply, utterly, sublime. In the way that mountains and cliff faces and eagles and humpback whales are. I loved it so, so much.

[Sam Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the one about the house burning down.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love a collection that makes me uncomfortable multiple times, but includes beauty in between the feelings too.

[Aimen · Rating 3 out of 5]

really enjoyed how lyrical doireann ní ghríofa’s work is while still tying the narrative to her places

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsure of exactly what to write as I read this whilst having Covid, so part of my reading was likely slumped into days of battling weird exhaustion, but nonetheless, I still enjoyed this collection.

[Sini · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75

[Lucia Abreu]

This slaps

[Katherine Yan · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are each a star, and the stars shimmer together in a luminous constellation. Reading them over and over was like looking at the night sky, and seeing it grow more and more alive.