Saint Michael In Peril of The Sea

In this, her fifth collection, Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons continues to record the journey of a rich and passionate life. Moving on from the earlier poems of migration and love and loss she now concerns herself with survival, rebirth, the tentative rediscovery of love in all its doubts and certainties.

Rich in its evocation of different land- and sea-scapes, this poetry of pilgrimage and of physicality celebrates the Atlantic coasts of Donegal, the estuaries of the South East, the slow canals of the midlands, the agelessness of tradition in Brittany. Fitzpatrick Simmons achieves a rare blend of American desire to achieve form with the more Irish expression of the liberating potential of imagination and music. A collection to savour - often.

Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons took an MA from the University of New Hampshire. Her four collections of poetry have been reviewed in the USA, Ireland and Great Britain. Widely published in literary journals in Ireland, England and America, Janice''s work has appeared in major anthologies such as A Rage for Order, The Backyards of Heaven, The Blackbird''s Nest, Salmon: A Journey in Poetry 1981-2007 and Irish American Poets since 1800. After a period as assistant director of the Frost Place in New Hampshire, Janice founded the Poets'' House in Portmuck in 1990, moved it to Falcarragh in 1996 and relocated its teaching function to Waterford in September 2005. The Poets'' House was the first cultural and educational institution in Ireland to offer an MA in creative writing.