Infinity Pool by Vona Groarke: Subtle observations take readers on journey of the senses in accomplished collection
Author
:
Vona Groarke
ISBN-13
:
978-1917371094
Publisher
:
Gallery Press
Guideline Price
:
€11.95
If poets are to be either 'visual' or 'haptic', as Randall Jarrell once suggested in a review of Marianne Moore, then Vona Groarke (like Moore) is visual. Her latest book, Infinity Pool
,
exemplifies this.
The starting point of these poems is inevitably how a subject strikes the eye: the dense clouds above
Knock
as seen from an aeroplane window; a future passed through, 'like a car through fog'; or the poem itself – the 'infinity pool' of the title – a blue rectangle held against blue, so the viewer can't quite 'tell the edge'.
This is a depiction of the watched world and the effect for the reader is an immediacy of vision: a scarecrow 'derided' by the wind; a butterfly that 'chases itself down, very lightly, between stalks/ of cow parsley up to my neck'; 'Antique dusk/ with its yellowing pages'.
I imagine the cow parsley as
Sligo
– the poet's county – on a May afternoon; while the antique dusk is surely
England
, the yellowish glow of Cambridge where Groarke is poet-in-residence. The writing inhabits both places with focused and tender attention.
READ MORE
There is a third place also, the place of poems, a complicated realm into which the poet climbs 'through tears in the brocade'. This strange state of existence – described in Hindsight as a 'pipe of light I pull myself through/ like a rag through the barrel of a shotgun' – is tested and questioned throughout. The result, as always with Groarke, is exciting intellectual exploration.
[
The Illegals by Shaun Walker: The Russian agent who couldn't get Irish people to shut up, and other spy stories
Opens in new window
]
[
The fall of an ancient tree is a sad occasion. It marks the death of a living monument
Opens in new window
]
Hers is a 'thinking eye', to borrow Klee's phrase: the immediacy of the visual is always joined and powered by the working-out of an idea. The Future of the Poem, for instance, is a verse-essay in miniature, each brief section a prophesy, or a dare: 'Watch it become something smaller./ Watch it rot.'
Although the book closes with a magnificent sequence written after reading Chinese love poems, Groarke, again like Moore, favours anti-Romantic subject matter: a maths copybook; a ball of lint; a coin game where 'the batten sweeps forward to nudge them all in'.
In this poem (Tipping Point), a skilful play with negatives leads us towards its heartbreaking conclusion – just one triumphant example of the subtle manipulations of light and surface that illuminate the whole collection.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
25 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Event guide: The Weir, Kilkenny Arts Festival and other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week The Weir From Friday, August 8th until Saturday, September 6th, 3Olympia, Dublin, 7.30pm, €70.60/ €60.60/ €26.50, Conor McPherson's play premiered in London's Royal Court Theatre in July 1997, with its most recent Irish production two and a half years ago at the Abbey . A rather swift return, one might think, but not when the likes of Brendan Gleeson , Tom Vaughan-Lawlor , Kate Phillips and Seán McGinley (who was in the 2008 Gate Theatre production) are involved. Relative newcomer Owen McDonnell (recently seen in Bad Sisters) completes the ensemble cast in a tale of compelling, often unnerving memories of loss imparted in an isolated rural bar somewhere in Co Leitrim. Following its Dublin run, the play will transfer to London's Harold Pinter Theatre from Friday, September 12th until Saturday, December 6th. McPherson, meanwhile, directs his play for the first time. Gigs Pierce Turner – Ó Riada Tuesday, August 5th, Wexford Arts Centre, 8pm, €30, Wexford musical adventurer Pierce Turner rarely misses a trick when it comes to reframing his work. Presented as part of Wexford Fleadh 2025, Ó Riada will feature songs from his back catalogue that have been inspired not just by Irish baroque composer/ arranger Seán Ó Riada but also by Sligo harpist Turlough O'Carolan . Turner is joined on stage by cellist/vocalist Aongus MacAmhlaigh, uileann piper Ned Wall, and a local choir. READ MORE We've Only Just Begun From Thursday, August 7th until Saturday, August 9th, Whelan's, Dublin, 7.30pm, €15/ €7, Winemom The 2025 edition of this three-night music festival sees over 30 performances (bands, solo acts, DJs) across two stages. The almost exclusively Irish female line-up is a poke in the ribs to festival programmers who, consciously or not, avoid gender balance. Anyone with an ear for contemporary Irish music will know there is a wealth of emerging female talent, a fact that this festival makes blindingly obvious. Highlights are plentiful (no hair jokes, thank you), but must-sees include Florence Road, Negro Impacto, Hotgirl, Winemom, Sarah Crean, Annika Kilkenny, I Dreamed a Dream, ShmoneyDoll, Hannahbella, Becky McNeice, and For Nina. Howth Roots and Blues Festival From Friday, August 8th until Sunday, August 10th, Howth, Co Dublin, various venues/times/prices, Susan O'Neill As if to further prove a point about gender balance in music festival programming, Paul Byrne, the organiser of this annual coastal, scenic shebang, has (apparently effortlessly) scheduled Muireann Bradley, Susan O'Neill, Mary Stokes, Bree Harris, Grainne Duffy, Susan Tomelty, Winter Wilson, Jam Tarts, Eeffaa, and several other women to perform over the weekend. The bluesy/rootsy blokes are here, too, of course (including Mundy, Brush Shiels, Rob Strong, Mik Pyro, Boye Papagee, Ben Prevo, Dermot Byrne, and more), but it's reassuring to see that there's a will to be fair, there's a way. Arts Festival Kilkenny Arts Festival From Thursday, August 7th until Sunday, August 17th, various venues/times/prices, Ciarán Hinds Ten days of superb, different venues (from churches and courtyards to town houses and, yes, a castle), singular artistic collaborations, and a rare kind of audience-artist connection – what's not to love about the Kilkenny Arts Festival? Events to circle in red include The More Beautiful World, a specially commissioned alliance between composer/ multi-instrumentalist Sam Perkin , actor Ciarán Hinds , mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty, and US activist Charles Eisenstein (St Canice's Cathedral, Sunday, August 10th, 8.30pm, €30/ €28), Martin Hayes & Friends (St Canice's Cathedral, Saturday, August 16th, 8.30pm, €37/ €35), and This-Topia, a 'part theatre, part rave, part group therapy' performance by choreographer/performer Jessie Thompson, visual designer Ross Ryder, and Irish band Meltybrains? (Watergate Theatre, Sunday, August 17th, 7pm, €25/ €22). Visual Art Art + Soul Until Sunday, August 31st, Culloden Estate and Spa, Belfast, adm free, Heading to Court by Patrick O'Reilly One of Northern Ireland's leading cultural events, Art + Soul presents a remarkable opportunity to view works by the likes of notable international artists such as Tracey Emin, Banksy, Damien Hirst, Salvador Dalí, Bridget Riley, Andy Warhol, Picasso, and Joan Miró, and many Irish artists (including Patrick O'Reilly, Gordon Harris, and Anna McKeever). There are also over 100 sculptures on display throughout the 12-acre grounds of Culloden Estate. Included in the exhibition period are artists' talks and daily guided tours (12pm/ 2pm/ 4pm). Art+Soul is presented in partnership with Gormleys Art Gallery, Belfast and Dublin. Stage FrielDays: A Homecoming 2025-2029 Until Sunday, August 31st, various counties, Presenting five Brian Friel plays in five weeks is an ambitious undertaking, but 29 of his plays over the next five years is surely beyond that (2029 is the centenary of the playwright's birth in Omagh, Co Tyrone). The official opening for FrielDays features a performed reading of Dancing at Lughnasa, St. Columba's School, Glenties, Co Donegal (until Sunday, August 17th). Film Boyne Valley International Film Festival From Friday, August 8th until Sunday, August 10th, Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, Co Louth, various times/prices, Four Mothers Four years in, and the Boyne Valley International Film Festival (BVIFF) is striding purposefully ahead with a programme that incorporates documentary, animation, shorts, and features. Films include Niall Duffy's Galar, a true-life feature about Donegal's Mica crisis, Aisling Byrne's Oscar-longlisted and IFTA-nominated short Turnaround, and Sonya O'Donoghue's Where the Old Man Lives, featuring writer Michael Harding in his debut acting role. The Gala Screening is Four Mothers, co-written by Drogheda brothers Colin and Darren Thornton, and directed by the latter. Still Running The Little Shop of Horrors Until Saturday, August 9th, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, 7.30pm, €63.49/ €52.30/ €41.05/ €35.45, Little Shop of Horrors Loosely based on the 1960 cult comedy film of the same name, this musical, an all-Irish production, features songs composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid) and lead performances by Irish actors David O'Reilly and Jacqueline Brunton. TheatreworX's Claire Tighe directs, co-produces and choreographs. Book it this week Séamus and Caoimhe Uí Fhlatharta, Siamsa Tíre, Tralee, Co Kerry, September 21st, Benson Boone, 3Arena, Dublin, October 24th, King Princess, Vicar Street, Dublin, December 3rd, Kean Kavanagh, Button Factory, Dublin, December 17th,
Irish Times
25 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Gratefully and Affectionately. Mary Lavin and the New Yorker: A rich trove of insights
Gratefully and Affectionately. Mary Lavin and The New Yorker Author : Gráinne Hurley ISBN-13 : 978-1-84840-930-9 Publisher : New Island Guideline Price : €27.95 'Getting published in The New Yorker was – and still is today – notoriously difficult,' Gráinne Hurley writes in the introduction to her captivating account of Mary Lavin 's relationship with the famous magazine. Hurley's sources are numerous, but consist mainly of 400 letters exchanged between Lavin and her editor, Rachel MacKenzie. Most letters dealt with editorial matters but, as a friendship grew, they became personal and provide valuable insights into Lavin's writing process and her everyday life. The book is arranged chronologically and charts Lavin's career from the moment she was introduced to The New Yorker by JD Salinger in 1957. By then she was already a well-established writer but the New Yorker catapulted her into international fame and provided her with a good income, which, as a widow with three children, she needed. Who'd rely on short stories for a living? Well, someone with a 'first reading' contract with the New Yorker, back then anyway. The first story published funded a deposit on the mews on Lad Lane, which became Lavin's Dublin home. It was initially a bit of a shambles – but still. READ MORE This book demonstrates the link between literature and money. Lavin always wrote what she wanted to write. But when the New Yorker was publishing her regularly, she was under pressure to produce excellent short stories regularly and often. Would her output have been smaller had she lacked the financial incentive the magazine offered? The New Yorker published 16 stories, including many of her best, over about 20 years. [ Mary Lavin: 'Writing for her was a kind of need. It was the thing that was going to get her through' Opens in new window ] Several were rejected, too, but Lavin usually found other homes for those that were 'not quite right for us', or 'too strong'. Before anything was published, intense editing was the norm. Sometimes the amendments are amusing. A description of a baby's leaking nappy had to be excised. (Too strong?) This well-researched book is a rich trove of information on Lavin's wonderful writing, and on the key role of the editor in the production of literature. Like other powerful publishers, the New Yorker was able to shape literary history. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer and critic. She is Laureate for Irish Fiction
Irish Times
39 minutes ago
- Irish Times
State of the art: ‘My dream is to be in the studio working solidly. Having a full-time job is a distraction from that'
How do you make it as an artist ? Even assuming all the talent in the world, success is never guaranteed; and while success may mean different things, common to all is having the time and space to make work, and then the time and space for people to see it. Most agree that it is the viewer who completes the circle of their work. To make this happen, you need the right boost at the right time, and Faigh Amach, a new project from Temple Bar Gallery & Studios , aims to do just that. Conceived by the Dublin venue's director and curator, Clíodhna Shaffrey and Michael Hill, Faigh Amach − literally, Find Out, or Discover − is an exhibition of the work of three artists, one of whom will be offered a solo show at Southwark Park Galleries , in London. Applications were open to artists who had not yet had a significant international exhibition; Ella Bertilsson, Kathy Tynan and Emily Waszak were selected from more than 300 submissions. Together they offer an insight into the state of the next generation of art. Ella Bertilsson Ella Bertilsson. Photograph: Evanna Devine, courtesy the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Ella Bertilsson 's films, installations and actions mingle the unexpected, the quirky and the profound. A pop-up nail bar last November, through a hole in the wall of Temple Bar Gallery, became an opportunity for honest and intimate conversations. For Faigh Amach, the Swedish-born artist, who moved to Ireland in 2013, is creating an installation that invites us to dive into our inner worlds, where chaos, clutter, desire, myth and a spot of fantasy coalesce. For her central film, A Peanut Worm's Dream, the starting point was the memory of a teacher who used to stand outside school, smoking. 'She used to really suck in that cigarette, and there was something in it that just kept coming back to me, so I thought, Okay, I'm going to go with it.' Add in a story that she chanced upon in the news, about a woman with a parasitic worm in her brain, and you start to get the connections that ignite Bertilsson's work. READ MORE In her studio, a mind map charts the links between narrative threads, inner worlds, storytelling, portals to parallel universes, the human condition, bodily sensations, everyday consumerism and collective consciousness. 'My brain is like a container, and when I make work I hope it has enough layers that it can create different meanings for the viewer – that's what I'm striving for.' Bertilsson has been lucky, she says. 'But it's hard. I have a studio in Temple Bar Gallery for another two years, and before that I was in Rua Red . You settle in, and then you have to start shifting again.' Before that she was living in a bedsit and making work in the hallway. Now she divides her time between Callan, Co Kilkenny, and Wicklow, commuting to Dublin by train, which she describes as 'like a green tunnel. Nice, but tiring as well, for sure.' Life as an artist is precarious. Bertilsson spends her commuting time applying for things and writing exhibition proposals, which are tricky: 'I don't know, is it better to go into an imaginary project that doesn't exist yet, or write about something you've already done?' Previously working in restaurants, Bertilsson now supplements her income with screen-printing workshops at Black Church Print Studios , but she has avoided longer commitments because 'if you sign up for something and then you have a project, you need time for the project. [ 'Having a minimum-wage job sucks the life out of my soul': 10 young artists on the challenges they face Opens in new window ] 'My dream,' she continues, 'is to be in the studio working solidly. That's what I am striving for.' Restaurant jobs gave her flexibility, and plenty of context for her work, 'but having a full-time job is a distraction from that dream to come true. I think it can be pretty intense sometimes, you're juggling many balls in the air.' Guilt comes into it: 'Sometimes it feels like you have very little time for the people in your life. Then the time that you're not spending in the studio, you're trying to catch up on your admin, applications, emails, invoices … So you're constantly chasing things just because you don't know what's around the corner. Still,' she concludes, 'It's never ever boring. You can learn and grow so much, it's kind of endless. That's pretty amazing.' Kathy Tynan Kathy Tynan. Photograph: Pauline Toesca, courtesy the artist Currently based at Dún Laoghaire Baths Artist Studios , in Co Dublin, Kathy Tynan shows with the Kevin Kavanagh gallery . Her paintings draw attention to things we might otherwise miss, and to the intimacies of the everyday. For Tynan, an artist ever alert to nuance, chance can change everything. The way the cat in her painting Crumlin Cat was sprawled 'informed how I painted the hand in Bad Dreams, and that had a knock-on effect on the subsequent paintings.' Location matters too. Moving into her Dún Laoghaire studio, but balancing it with life necessities, such as childcare pickups, 'I had thought, I'll paint the sea, and it will be really tranquil, but it has been more about stressed paintings, like painting in a rush. Some of them have worked out really well because of that urgency.' Tynan graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2010; she says she didn't have the confidence to set up a painting practice at the time, 'because there was so much I didn't understand about art history, contemporary art and all the discussions that were going on.' Taking a master's gave her 'a deep dive into art criticism and philosophy', which, she says, helped her to put it all aside and return to painting, which she discovered to be 'experience-based and not intellectual at all. 'I felt like I had permission to go back to it then, because I knew what was going on.' Now she teaches at the college, so 'it has come full circle. It's good to be mentally challenged, and it's good to push back,' she says. When I graduated, I wasn't waiting for these opportunities, I was able to make my own. I don't know if that's possible now — Kathy Tynan 'Having a child changed my sense of time. I'm giving parenting my all, giving art my all, but there are these moments when all the effort comes together. I'm talking to the students – I had always wanted to be a tutor – and there are times when it all synthesises into a good painting. The urgency to make something meaningful has really upped the intensity of my work.' Nudging aside concerns that her new body of work for Faigh Amach is almost too personal, she says instead that she has 'tried to push myself to be a little embarrassing, a little too revealing'. [ From the archive: What do artists need to be creative? From time and space to hope, six tell us what makes them tick Opens in new window ] Graduating during the last recession, Tynan hadn't had a job to lose. 'Rent was lower, and things were happening with artists. We were able to rent spaces, put on our own shows. I didn't have a frame of reference for selling art, but it felt like there were DIY opportunities. And that's how I got a break.' She and a group of fellow artists rented the gallery at Pallas Projects , and also at the Hendrons building on Dominick Street. 'We didn't know a thing, and we were completely unknown, but Kevin Kavanagh came in to see one of the shows, and it piqued his interest.' These days things are harder. Artists ask: what's the process, and how do I get a show? 'I say, 'Apply for a show at Pallas, or there's an open submission at Butler , and sign up to the Visual Artists Ireland bulletin .' But when I graduated I wasn't waiting for these opportunities. I was able to make my own. I don't know if that's possible now.' Emily Waszak Emily Waszak in her studio. Photograph: Evanna Devine, courtesy the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Emily Waszak , who has Japanese and American heritage, divides her time between Donegal and Dublin, where she has a studio at Fire Station . Originally working in industrial weaving, Waszak came to making art on the death of her husband in the first year of the Covid pandemic. Drawing on the traditions of Japanese ceramics, and weaving, her work explores memory, mourning, ritual and the power of tactile making. Preferring to see Faigh Amach as an 'opportunity to work with two other brilliant artists', rather than as a prize, she says she has found the art world in Ireland tough but supportive. 'There can be a feeling of competition, because you're constantly being judged as an artist, and there's rejection. It can be quite intense, but when you find your people it is a lovely and generous community.' As artists are priced out of Dublin, Waszak points to the need for more development of our rural arts infrastructure. 'The Letterkenny Regional Cultural Centre is an amazing support, but Donegal doesn't have a lot of workspaces for artists.' Emily Waszak: 'We imbue them with meaning, then we receive that meaning back.' Photograph: Evanna Devine, courtesy the artist and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Quietly thoughtful, she is alert to the different energies of rural and urban life. 'I need quiet. I need my own head. That's not just studio time, it's being in the landscape. But once I'm in the testing phase I need people, and to have other artists around.' While many artists live rurally, cities are also the main places where careers happen. 'To be able to go to openings, performances, talks, and have conversations, in Dublin, and outside of Ireland, I need both things.' Currently taking an Irish-language class, Waszak is alert to the connections in folklores across the globe, describing characters that occur in both Japanese and Irish myth. 'I'm not reproducing culture,' she says of her work. 'I'm taking resonances from what I understand about the world through culture.' Her explorations have led to an understanding of the ways in which many of the tools to deal with the things that afflict us are already here. [ 'I want to be positive': Dublin artist whose home was firebombed in a case of mistaken identity Opens in new window ] For her, a pivotal point was not being able to go to the funeral of her husband during Covid, which she describes as horrific. 'Partly it was so horrific because rituals are what ground us in the world.' This led to explorations of what she terms ancestral technology. 'These are the tools for being in the world that have been left by our ancestors through generations. Some are objects, and some are gestures, acts and ritual. There rituals continue to be passed down as a way of helping ourselves, and the next generations, to deal with our larger, existential understandings.' Objects matter too. 'We imbue them with meaning, then we receive that meaning back, like looking into a mirror. We say, 'Wow, this is amazing,' but it is there because we put it there. An object has a power to hold a gesture, to hold meaning. When you're isolated or grieving – and I think everyone is feeling a bit isolated under late-stage capitalism – you just need something. Sometimes it is easier to begin with yourself in a room, maybe with an object. Then work your way out to people again.' Faigh Amach is at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios until Sunday, September 21st. The artist to exhibit in London will be selected by Southwark Park Galleries ' director and deputy director, Judith Carlton and Charlotte Baker, and will be announced in October
