Shortlisted for the 2015 Shine/Strong Award for Best Debut Collection

Jean Kavanagh’s first collection moves between diverse but not incidental locations: Dublin, Clare, Oslo and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Kavanagh is not a nomad in the sense of someone wandering aimlessly, but nomadic as in following a fixed pattern of movement. The places the poet calls home are realized through a c...
Shortlisted for the 2015 Shine/Strong Award for Best Debut Collection

Jean Kavanagh’s first collection moves between diverse but not incidental locations: Dublin, Clare, Oslo and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Kavanagh is not a nomad in the sense of someone wandering aimlessly, but nomadic as in following a fixed pattern of movement. The places the poet calls home are realized through a chorus of landmarks: personal bonds, memories, photographs and folklore, where magic exists, and where the encounters with others are as important as the landscapes. There are some things we cannot do alone. This is a book about belonging.
Jean Kavanagh is an Irish poet living in Norway. She studied Irish Folklore and English Literature in UCD, Dublin, and has a Masters’ Degree in Indigenous Studies from the Arctic University of Tromsø, Norway. Her work has been published in journals, showcase anthologies for the Galway Arts Centre, and in Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon, 2011), and Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry (Salmon, 2016). In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. Other Places, her debut collection, was published in 2014, and was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Collection in 2015.
