out of emptied cups explores what it means to be human--a consciousness contained within a shell that dictates so much of what our experience of life will be.
Including internationally award-winning and shortlisted pieces, these strongly felt poems interrogate what it means to be a woman in a world where the female body still preordains so much for the person it contains.
Deliberately weaving in and out of, and cross-referencing, each other, these poems reveal multiple perspectives on the same or related narratives.
At times unabashedly political, this book plumbs the poet's own experiences of birth, death, loss, treatment/mistreatment and place in the world--as a woman, as an immigrant, as a parent, as a former environment journalist/author depicting the decline of our planet, as a human being questioning our treatment of others based on lines on a map and 'so many lengths/of slick red tape'.
Collectively these poems strive to cross the boundary between body and soul.
To be filled to overflowing.
Emptied.
To be simultaneously half-full, half-empty.
To drink deeply of this one precious cup and find meaning in the traces of what remains--lifting our hearts/out of emptied cups/and away with them/into the heavens.
Reading Anne Casey's poems, I want to 'embrace the world with a desperate love'.
Luka BloomIn poems often formally playful, Anne Casey looks hard at human experience--sex, love, vulnerability, danger--and refuses to look away; the poems display resilience and speak back against shame.
out of emptied cups explores not only what it is to be a woman in this world, at this time, but what it is to be alive, body and soul.
Maggie Smith, PoetFrom the mystery and grace of language to wry humour and a delicate ability to lay the self open, from unflinching grimness to eloquent notes of lamentation, pointed political satire and an enthusiasm for the shape-shifting play of words, this collection gives us the sustained sense of discovery that is poetry at its best.
