POETRY BOOK LAUNCH: “Not to Scale”

POETRY BOOK LAUNCH: “Not to Scale”

The ICC is delighted to present the UK Launch of the Irish Poet, Anne Fitzgerald’s new Poetry Collection.. “Not to Scale”

Not to Scale is Anne Fitzgerald’s response to the Irish Government’s Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes final report, published on 30th October, 2020.

This long poem introduces us to the  architect, and designer of religious institutions, Ralph Byrne. It revisits Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and politician Éamon de Valera’s architecture of containment, pertaining to illegitimacy, incarceration, waywardness and the adoption culture. Underpinned by legislation such as the Carrigan Report (1931), Dance Hall Act (1935) and the Children (Amendment) Act (1957), ensured censorship and religion thrived. The remnants of which still exist in twenty-first century Éire.

Related poems build on her poetry collection Vacant Possession (2017), exploring the plight of an unmarried mother in ‘Granard, Co. Longford’ and of children born out of wedlock in ‘Climbing Machu Picchu’, while the poem ‘Dinner Dance, 1946’ pays homage to Licensed Vintners.

“Not to Scale” will be published at the end of August 2024, by Forty Foot Press (Dublin), as a Limited Edition of 200 copies only – signed & numbered by the Poet. Cost £20.00: To order a copy in advance of this event contact  fortyfootpresseditor@gmail.com

Wed 30 October 2024

Doors: 7.00pm; Starts: 7.30pm

Tickets: £7

 Not To Scale

Front Cover Image: Grief (Mother & Baby Home), 2021, Ink & pen drawing, 28 x 30 cm, signed IMOGEN. Reproduced by kind permission of artist Imogen Stuart RHA. 

Photograph of cover image © John Bellew 2024.

Praise for Anne Fitzgerald’s previous Poetry Collection “Vacant Possession’…

‘Is there a poet writing in Ireland who feels so profoundly and knows more surely love’s obsessions, its piercing chronicles, its succour and sorrows than Anne Fitzgerald? The poems in Vacant Possession char the page, leaving their imprint, imperishable, unique.’ –  Frank McGuinness

‘…is a chronicle of love and loss. It is a fierce, yet quietly uttered, indictment of the Irish Catholic Church and State’s inhumane treatment of unmarried mothers; babies taken from them for a pittance and sold for profit.’ – STAND

‘It is this refusal to resolve that is what is most extraordinary about this piercing, intelligent book.’ – Poetry Ireland Review

‘It speaks its testimony precisely, like a naturalist describing life from the field in patient detail and rigorous, demystifying bluntness. Fitzgerald’s field is the past that endures, doesn’t die but echoes, vibrates, and, if ignored, may still undermine like the aftershocks of an earthquake. These are beautiful, aching, defiantly moving poems.’  – The Manhattan Review

About The Poet Anne Fitzgerald

Anne Fitzgerald was raised in Sandycove, County Dublin, Ireland. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast. Her poetry collections are Swimming Lessons (Wales, Stonebridge, 2001), The Map of Everything (Dublin, Forty Foot Press, 2006), Beyond the Sea (Salmon Poetry, 2012), and Vacant Possession (Co. Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2017).  

In 2006 Anne founded Forty Foot Press http://www.fortyfootpress.ie/ in addition to two School Publishing Houses, Monkstown Educate Together Press (MET Press, 2003) and Loreto Abbey Dalkey Press (LAD Press, 2004). She is a recipient of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Writer-in-Residence bursary at The Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco. She has taught Creative Writing extensively across Ireland, Iceland and the United States of America. Anne lives in Sandycove, Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, Ireland.  

Anne Fitzgerald can be seen here on ‘ICC Digital’ the ICC’s on- line Channel, paying tribute to the late great Irish Poet Eavan Boland (in 2020).

To find out more about  Anne Fitzgerald  visit Forty Foot Press at http://www.fortyfootpress.ie/anne-fitzgerald.html Also find Anne on  Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FortyFootPress.2006/