Once Upon a Quark by Anne Connolly

Anne Connolly chaired the Federation of Writers (Scotland) from 2016 to 2018 and was their Makar for 2014. She has a particular interest in her own Gaeilge language and is currently resurrecting it from the rust of many years!

‘Once upon a Quark is a cornucopia of poems, overflowing in all directions and best read out loud. Whether writing personal poems or tackling Irish history, natural history, the virtual world or religious intolerance, Anne Connolly has the ability to write with the ear; in turn, funny, pithy, profound. She is a wonderful performer of her poems.’

—Christine de Luca

‘Once upon a Quark signals from the title page both its breadth of reference and its distinctive melding of the homely and the transcendent. These poems are an absolute delight, witty, virtuosic in their varieties of form, their strikingly original twists on familiar phrases, profoundly serious in their intent. Anne Connolly takes on with the lightest of touches, the deftest verbal playfulness, the key issues of an era in which human beings are at odds with nature and with themselves. At the heart of this truly human and humane collection is a palpable warmth, rooted in a strong sense of family, of history, of place. Anne Connolly’s clear-sighted and compassionate eyes ‘see life steadily and see it whole’. But they look beyond the quotidian to infinite possibilities, launching into the unknown a message which, as she says, ‘may just reach/the Dreamtime.’

—A. C. Clarke

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