Poet & Writer
Máighréad Medbh
— Margaret Lucey
I crawl out of memory
and style myself into the landscape.I am not the mark the stylus makes
but I mould myself around it for life.(from ‘Life and Limb’, in Dwelling)
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— Margaret Lucey
I crawl out of memory
and style myself into the landscape.I am not the mark the stylus makes
but I mould myself around it for life.(from ‘Life and Limb’, in Dwelling)
I am a poet and prose writer with a particular interest in how things move and inter-relate. I think of my process as a bit like method acting — a mix of empathy and research. I have ten published books and my work appears in many major anthologies and journals.
I was a performance poet for many years and still tend towards a performative approach both when writing and presenting my work. However, most of my books are long-form sequences that involve research and immersive explorations.
Lately I have become interested in combining essay and poetry, a type of writing for which I have invented the term, autopoetic essay. Mixed genre and lyric essay didn't quite say it.
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Máighréad Medbh's practice extends beyond the published page. She has performed her poetry nationally and internationally.
Máighreád Medbh’s impressive, impressionistic Imbolg is by far the most innovative book of those under review … one aspect that is compelling about the book is its attempt to reimagine the personal lyric … The book’s strange vitality derives from the attentiveness of the poet to the shifting nature of experience.
There are a few Irish women poets who have worked with the long-form poem for many years; Catherine Walsh, Máighreád Medbh and Martina Evans have all published several such works that deserve more attention.
This is courageous poetry, charting the journey of the female soul through an almost clinical exploration of the female body’s desires and vulnerabilities … Her narrators are often in extreme states: of rejection, ecstasy, sexual arousal or the disaffection of [the new sequence]. … Maps to zones of the psyche that are rarely explored in Irish poetry, [the poems] are built to be experienced on the pulse, and ‘in the deep heart’s core’.
I took Savage Solitude to the desert … I thought it was beautiful … and although quite demanding at first … wise and rich. It also has an extraordinary deep rhythm (almost certainly a poet’s book – by not for) – it builds up. It was immensely fruitful for me.