Geis

Winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award


Geis is a word from Irish mythology meaning a supernatural taboo or injunction on behavior. In her third volume of poetry (following the critically acclaimed The Nowhere Birds and The Sea Cabinet), Caitríona O’Reilly examines the geis in all of its psychological, emotional, and moral suggestiveness: exploring the prohibitions and compulsions under which we sometimes place ourselves, or find ourselves placed. Geis is the first appearance of a volume by Caitríona O’Reilly in North America, though she has been anthologized numerous times, including in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I (2005) and The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry (2nd edition, 2011).

In poems that range from the searingly personal to the more playfully abstract and philosophical, this poet’s characteristic imaginative range and linguistic verve are everywhere in evidence. These are poems that question our sometimes tenuous links with the world, with others, and even with ourselves, but which ultimately celebrate the richness of experience and the power of language to affirm it.