Publisher's Synopsis
The poems in Zephyr are crafted by a poet with a fresh voice who invites us into three unique places: Alaska, the west of Ireland, and the world of a girl with Down syndrome.
This first collection of poems by Mary Mullen is cinematically beautiful, and brightly honest in exploring the emotional landscape of single motherhood, inclusion, the search for belonging, the art of dancing with a foot on two continents, and the longing for a world set right.
"Mary Mullen's poems of home and displacement... ache with longing and loss. Her language is pure and rich, and she has a wry eye for the arresting detail. If we can claim her, Ireland has found another magical woman poet."
Nuala Nì Chonchúir
"Mary Mullen's work is clear and unsentimental. Her poems... are vibrantly alive. The sensibility they reveal contains a rare combination of wonder and generosity that is truly uplifting to read."
Michael Gorman
Mary Mullen's parents left Chicago after World War II and availed of land offered to veterans 'out west' under the Homestead Act. They chose a piece of land in Soldotna, Alaska, where Mary was born in 1952. Mary moved to Ballinderreen, Co. Galway in 1996, where she still lives with her daughter, Lily, a sparkly girl who was born with Down syndrome. Mary's poems have been published in The Stinging Fly, Crannog, the Cuirt Annual, and Landing Places, an anthology of Immigrant poets published by Dedalus Press. Her non-fiction pieces have been featured in the Cork Literary Review, We Alaskans, the Irish Times, and on RTE Radio One. She teaches creative writing and memoir classes. She was awarded an MA in Writing from the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2006.
