Washing Windows Too : Irish Women Write Poetry

Washing Windows Too contains 100 new poems, selected by co-editor Alan Hayes, by Irish women, living on the island and abroad, who have not yet published a full collection of poetry.

The writers in Washing Windows Too have things on their minds that have exploded into that love-urgency that makes writers write. And, just as it should be, few subjects are off limits. A poet may not always love her inspirational material, but those here revere the act of writing so much that honing their ideas, visions, and insights into poem-shaped, concrete objects has become crucial. A poem can be a path into the deepest, purest self, and back out again—through the very act of writing—to a calmer, less frenetic place. Because poets deal with issues that concern them - universal truths, often—certain themes emerge, as they do in all anthologies. In Washing Windows Too, particular groupings of motifs recur and these include birth and motherhood; child-love and empty nests; migration and refugees; women's power and agency; bodies, the male gaze, and violence; nature and its beauties; art, creation, and the act of writing itself; uneasy relationships; politics; health and illness; and grief and death. And, because we are living in the early twenty-twenties, the pandemic naturally features in some poems. This book reached No 3 in the Irish bestseller charts—an historic achievement.