Category Archives: Publicity & promotion

You can now buy my poetry collection ‘Grace Notes’ from Salmon Poetry!

Grace Notes, Publicity & promotion, Rescued poem, Salmon Poetry
Cover of the book Grace Notes: Giving Voice to Gráinne Mhaol, Ireland’s Pirate Queen by Jennifer Liston. The design features bold, swirling brushstrokes in shades of blue, green, and purple, with touches of red, resembling an abstract painting of ocean waves. The title and author’s name are overlaid in white and gold text, with the publisher, Salmon Poetry, noted at the bottom. This Alt Text was generated by ChatGPT.

It’s finally here!

Ennistymon-based Salmon Poetry has published my poetry collection, Grace Notes. It will be launched at the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon on Friday 8 November. I’m really looking forward to launching this baby into the world. It’s been a long time in the making.

Grace Notes is a collection of poems that express fragments of the life of Grace O’Malley/Gráinne Mhaol. The Gráinne compositions place Gráinne at different points in her life and also situate her in a mediaeval past and a borrowed future via her dreams, or aislings. Interspersed with these compositions are ‘rescued’ poems. I chose 17 texts connected to Gráinne – a selection of factual or fictional biographies of her and a small number of contemporary historical texts – from which I rescued 50 poems.

Isn’t the cover gorgeous? Salmon Poetry’s Siobhán Hutson Jeanotte designed it. I requested that it wouldn’t feature the usual pirate queen image bandied around whenever Grace O’Malley is illustrated, and Siobhán did a wonderful job with an abstract image that suggests movement and sea and waves without hitting us over the head with them.

You can buy the book directly from the Salmon Poetry website. They ship worldwide!

Rescued poetry featured on Jacket2

Publicity & promotion

I’m absolutely thrilled that the delightful Jerome Rothenberg has featured my rescued poetry on Jacket2, a leading online journal that offers commentary on contemporary poetry and poetics. You can read it over here.

He says:

Her procedural poetry, as presented here, adds significantly to the line of such poetry in modern and postmodern writing — in both her poems and poetics. The idea of the “rescued poem” is indubitably her own, and a further collection of poems as examples will shortly be gathered as a book.

Jerome is an eminent American contemporary poet who started his career as a translator of poetry. He is also a highly regarded poetry anthologist, editor and poetic theorist. One of the most well-known anthologies for which he is responsible is the beautiful Technicians of the Sacred, a collection of poetry and incantations from indigenous peoples around the world.

You can read more about Jerome on the Poetry Foundation website.

Thank you so much, Jerome.

UPDATE: I was very sad to hear that Jerome died in April 2024. A great loss to the poetry world.

RIP Jerome Rothenberg: born 11 December 1931, died 21 April 2024.

Read Jerome Rothenberg’s obituary in The Guardian here.