SMFOLBC - SMF ONLINE BOOK CLUB

In the Spring of 2020 as the reality of the pandemic was beginning to dawn, I sent out a tentative note to the world to see if anyone wanted to join an online book club. I thought it would be a nice idea to reach out to old friends and make new connections so that while everyone was apart, at least we could connect over books. To cut a long story short, the result has been the formation of a group of people who have all become warm friends as we've gathered online to share our interest in novels, reading and creative writing. This book club is a terrific gang of people and more important than their literary merits, our conversations have been life-affirming, wide-ranging and fun. The SMF bookclubbers have been my lifeline through lockdown, and now I can't imagine life without our monthly chats. Plus, we've had dazzling author visits for many of our meetings which have added even more meaning and substance to our discussions. Keep track of what we're reading on this (semi) regularly updated website.

THE POISON GLEN
BY
AnnMarie NíChuiréainn

The story of the stolen or missing child sits at the heart of The Poison Glen, alongside a desire to bear witness to family loss and cultures of silence in Ireland. Weaving together landscape, history, and the compelling mythology of a Donegal site known as ‘The Poison Glen’, here are poems of grit and burning, of wildness, grace and magic, of dreaming and compassion. The collection is rooted by ‘The Foundling Crib’, a poem that dwells on a long-gone Foundling Hospital in Dublin, accompanied by poems written as responses to sites of various Irish church- and state-run institutions.
In poems both tender and ferocious the book illuminates questions that run deep in the Irish psyche. Ultimately it asks, How can darkness be overcome by light?