Along the Liffey: Poems and Short Stories

"Along the Liffey, Sheila O''Hagan''s first book in 14 years, has a curious ''coming of age'' feel to it, poems and stories that reached a tipping point in the author''s head; that needed to be told. The stories, five in all, are strategically placed throughout the book to offer a counterpoint, a different register to the loftier diction and more formal concern of the poems... O''Hagan seems to have deliberately orchestrated poetry and prose, the formal and the informal, high and low registers of language to manipulate our reaction to the controversial but urgent themes she raises. It''s quietly subversive too in its evocation of the deeper reaches of the female psyche – ''sins of the flesh'' are not exclusive to one gender. Along the Liffey is unflinching but sympathetic – as one would expect from a writer of O''Hagan''s standing – in its portrayal of the human condition."
The Irish Times

Sheila O''Hagan began writing in 1984 while studying at Birkbeck College, London University. In 1988 she won the Goldsmith Award for Poetry, and in 1990 returned to her native Dublin. In 1991 she won the Patrick Kavanagh Award and in 1992 the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award for New Irish Poet of the year. She has twice been awarded First Prize for Poetry at Listowel Writers'' Week. She was the winner of the Strokestown International Prize for a single poem in 2000. Her short stories and poems have appeared in, among others, The Adirondack Review, The Sunday Tribune, Working Papers in Irish Studies. Her three collections are The Peacock''s Eye (1992), The Troubled House (1995) and Along The Liffey: Poems and Short Stories (2009) - all published by Salmon.