Advice to a Young Climber is a poem from my debut collection The Rag Tree Speaks, published by the Doire Press. It originally featured on the Australian poetry blog Project 365+1. The image is by my partner, the artist Philip Mussen.

Advice To A Young Climber

This was written when I first got into writing with any sense of seriousness and is a response to many years as a single mother struggling to manage and convincing myself how wonderful parenting is (which it is, but it is also very very hard work). It is a reaction to the loneliness of having to seem as though i was coping with small children, studying full time and caring for a terminally ill parent. However now I have teenagers.....

Best Years

This is a meloncholic, yet hopeful piece about love. And chocolate. And birds. But mainly love.

Bullfinch

Thiis poem definitely belongs in my greatest hits. It was originally published in The Compass Magazine, then shortlisted for the Listowel Writers Week Irish Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, then collected in the Antholgy edited by Carolyn Jess-Cooke Writing Motherhood, published by Seren Press and named book of the year 2017 by the Wales Arts Review, and finally featured in my debut collection The Rag Tree Speaks published by Doire Press.  Which is an awful lot of publishing for such a short poem.

Patagonia

I am a little fixated on words, which seems obvious for a poet to say. However i am interested on the etymology of language, words origins, why and how they change, and I am especially interested in mistranslations and how this effects meaning and misunderstanding in language and between people. And this is a short poem about that!

Emma McKervey