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Welcome to the website of Jessamine O'Connor, a Dublin born writer living on the Sligo Roscommon border in the west of Ireland.
My poetry collection 'Silver Spoon' was published by Salmon Poetry in 2021, and before that I published five chapbooks, including one with the Black Light Engine Room Press. I am an editor with Drunk Muse Press, and on the editorial team of Scrimshaw. After three years of study at IT Sligo, I have just received a first class honours degree in Writing & Literature, as well as an Order of Merit and the Dermot Healy Writing Award 2021. Previously my poems have won the Comórtas Filíochta Chultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich 2020 (with poem translated by Diarmuid Lenihen); Poetry Ireland/Butlers Cafe competition 2017, and the iYeats and Francis Ledwidge awards in 2011. My poems have been shortlisted in competitions such as the Hennessy, Cuirt, Over the Edge, Red Line Book Festival, and Doolin Writers Weekend. Silver Spoon published by Salmon Poetry. Book launch was on 11th February 2021, with Eithne Hand who also launched her debut collection 'Fox Trousers'. Watch it all on Salmon Poetry's YouTube channel. Find Silver Spoon in Salmon's bookshop here or in many bookshops including Charlie Byrne's, Books Upstairs, Rathfarnham bookshop, Kenny's, Liber in Sligo, and the Dubrays. Read the really lovely preface/review by Neil Young, here Cover art and illustrations within the book by Helen Chantrell Drunk Muse Press published our first book, the prison memoirs of Dareen Tatour "My Threatening Poem" - buy it now *as well as poetry collections by Harry Smart, George Gunn, and Josie Neill so far.... ***Coming soon, Helen B Grehan's selected poems and songs 'The Return' which I had the honour of compiling and editing. Launch: Sunday 29th May at 2pm in King House, Boyle, Co Roscommon. THE STRANGER - poem film, written and directed by me, in collaboration with incredible puppeteer CARMEL BALFE of Little Gem Puppets. This is a shadow puppet film about being an immigrant, here and abroad, with original acoustic music by renowned Helen B Grehan, and the poem read beautifully by Aoife ni Mhurchadha. We launched it at the Strokestown Poetry Festival, It was shortlisted for the 2019 O'Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition. The full text of the poem is included in Silver Spoon. WATCH 'THE STRANGER' ON YOUTUBE here *** I normally facilitate The Hermit Collective art/music/poetry/puppets/film/everything ensemble, and The Wrong Side of the Tracks Writer's group, but currently both are in hibernation. ----- From preface written by Neil Young for Silver Spoon: Here’s what else distinguishes this poet’s volume from many others on the packed shelves. she’s a writer of insatiable observation, whose watchfulness of norms of existence – in the living home, the street, the doorways, the fields, her native heath, up a chimney, in a dog’s glance – often lays bare its abnormality, or urges us on to revisualise the familiar... Innocence and menace interchange; fear and wonder collide. All this expressed, as is her knack, with unmistakable lyricism and empathy. Reviews of my previous book PACT : in The Poet's Republic here , by Neil Young; The Galway Advertiser here , by Des Kenny; and from Lagan Online here , Colin Dardis ...and other good reviews in The North, and The Blue Nib From a review of A Skyful of Kites in Sabotage by Emma Lee: "Jessamine O’Connor uses the poems in A Skyful of Kites to express anger, particularly at the failure and impotence of politics at home and abroad, both historically and in the present. However, these poems are not rants or directionless venting... "a way of saying ‘this is wrong’ without telling readers which way to vote. Jessamine O’Connor respects and gives space for her readers to think. "Her strength lies in her ability to be passionate about a situation, while structuring that passion into a poem that doesn’t dictate the reader’s reaction or hammer the poet’s viewpoint home." 
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