To Air Soul, Throw All Windows Wide By Mary Dorcey

o air the soul; throw all the windows wide. Then, silence laid, and white page, words in vigil, sit and let the ghosts come in ... 'Nearly every poem records an important human fact that has hitherto gone unspoken; nearly every poem both marks a past silence and opens a new possibility. This is a truly profound book, a remarkable and valuable achievement.' Thus Victor Luftig of Yale University greeted Mary Dorcey's Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers. From 1982, her poetry announced itself as revolutionary in subject matter and tone. It was and is groundbreaking. It shattered the silence of centuries in Ireland on the suppressed reality of women's lives and most remarkably on romantic/erotic love between women. Since then her poetry has travelled around the world and has been taught and researched from the USA to Finland, from Italy to Australia. Many of these poems have become classics, taught in both the Irish and British school curricula. Sensual, elegant, passionate, tender, challenging, politically engaged, Dorcey's poetry reaches out to us in a voice that is both intimate and challenging.