Midnight Solo

My first poetry collection Midnight Solo was published by Lagan Press.

This is what the back cover says:

The poems in Deirdre Cartmill’s eagerly awaited debut collection have their genesis in those tortured moments that spill out when you’re utterly alone – in the aftermath of a lover’s tiff, confronting the revenants of the shared past or coping with the loss of a father. These poems are often ferocious but always intensely human.

Cartmill views the world from the perspective of a new generation of poets who grew up through the conflict in the north of Ireland and who share a fractured sense of life and loss, who kick against the incongruity and irrationality which lingers in the post-conflict society, while struggling to envision a new normality.

Never self-indulgent, the poems of Midnight Solo broach important subjects and are often underpinned by a subtle ironic humour.  Intellect collides with emotion in her short lyrics, her nervy and nimble use of forms and her ambitious longer sequences.

By turns uncompromising and intimate, always surefooted and compelling, these poems have an edge and resonance that stays with the reader. This is a powerful and assured debut from an exciting new voice.

And here’s some reader reviews:

‘…an arresting first collection of ferocious and poignant verse.’ Newsletter

‘This debut collection from Deirdre Cartmill is superb. Her poetry balances emotional depth with vibrant imagery fed by personal experience, geography and history.

From Sadie strutting like an indignant swan to an exotic stranger smoking a Dunhill, Deirdre draws upon all the senses in the forging of her poems, which she kindly shares with us.’ Julie on Goodreads

Buy it on Amazon here, or contact me if you’d like a signed copy.

You can listen to me reading some poems from Midnight Solo here.