out of emptied cups

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 Bloom

"In 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, Poet

"From 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."

Peter Boyle, Poet and translator

"This is very powerful work, and very timely. It doesn't flinch at telling the difficult stories, but it also does so in a controlled, crafted manner: this is skilful writing."

Kerry Featherstone & Carol Rowntree-Jones, Overton Poetry Prize (UK)

"A heartbreakingly beautiful exploration of human consciousness, Anne Casey's out of emptied cups is masterfully conceived and holds the reader to the page. This is poetry full of sorrow and wonder, of souls at spiritual thresholds, lit from within, language as pure enchantment, at once startling and liminal, 'lifting our hearts/out of emptied cups/and away with them/into the heavens'."

H l ne Cardona, Poet, actor and translator

"The poems in Anne Casey's out of emptied cups remind us that we live in a figurative not a literal, world. Her musical, inventive syntax harnesses memory as image-maker and family as cornerstone, where the spectral and the grounded are given equal weight. Craft and technique are a major feature of this work, and can be seen in the detail woven through wide-angle landscapes or the minutiae of the domesticity. Imagination is the driving spark that lights 'the infinite possibilities of the here and now...' (Observance)."

Anthony Lawrence, Poet and author

"Anne Casey's second collection is a haunting journey through the natural world, contemporary marriage, motherhood, and the experience of the migrant aching for family and birthplace. She also delves into the fraught and heartbreaking territory of the Catholic Church's treatment of women and children in Mother and Baby homes in her native Ireland. This is fine work, both delicate and brave, a kind of libation poured, paradoxically, out of the 'emptied cups' of the title."

Melinda Smith, Poet

"One of the most poignant and surprising takes on family life since Akhmatova, rooted in lived experience that many share but few have the combination of courage or skills to articulate in poetry, this is the work of a poet at the full measure of her powers, successfully realizing Yeats's goal for his own work, of giving serious study to sex and the dead."

Eddie Vega, Writer, poet, W.B. Yeats Society of New York

"The ancients once said the stars made music which no one can hear - but it is there - real, speaking to our souls. The music of Casey's poetry we can indeed hear. Her poetry sings with honesty, striking at the reader's heart. This is a brave, beautiful body of work. The power of Casey's poems reminded me of what the poet Muriel Rukeyser once said: 'What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open'. Casey's truth confronts us in her poetry, and challenges us to gaze through her eyes. Her poems tell a woman's truth, the truth we all need to listen to, if we want the world to change."

Dr. Wendy J Dunn, Novelist and poet