Notes and acknowledgements

Some poems from this collection have been published in the following magazines: Conversation Poetry Quarterly; 14; The Frogmore Papers; Equinox, Teynham News and The New Writer. Some poems have been published in Night Train 5, University of Kent, 2007; On the Line, Canterbury City Press, 2010; Canterbury Poet of the Year, Canterbury Festival, 2010; and in the pamphlets Nothing But (2007) and Learning to be English (2006, 2008) by Maria C. McCarthy.

‘July 1969’ was shortlisted for the Frogmore Poetry Prize, 2006, highly commended in the Split the Lark poetry competition, 2007 and longlisted for the MsLexia poetry competition, 2007. ‘Standards’ and ‘July 1969’ were part of a submission that was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, University of Kent, 2006. ‘At the Shrine of St Jude, Faversham’ was highly commended in the Save As poetry competition, 2010. Maria achieved second place for ‘Story’ in Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year, 2010.

Mitchelstown - a sequence

In February 2007, at the age of 47, Maria travelled to her father’s hometown of Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, for the first time. She is grateful to Liam Cusack for his time and efforts before and during the trip, for local and historical detail of Mitchelstown, for helping her to find the boy her father was, and so to understand the man that he became.

‘Windowless’ refers to the burning of Mitchelstown Castle, Co. Cork, in 1922, at the end of the Irish War of Independence. Mitchelstown Creameries, known locally as the Co-op, acquired the site and, later, built a milk-processing factory on the exact location where the castle once stood.

In ‘Two women’, a child born out of wedlock was known as ‘a boy child’ or a ‘girl child’.

‘Mitchelstown - a sequence’ is dedicated to Jim McCarthy, 1928-2000.

‘Ghost Writer’ is in memory of John Trelawny, with whom Maria took the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, 2005-2007. He was an avid self-published author, his most successful work being The Islanders, Beavers’ Press, 2007. Although he professed to ‘not really understand poetry’ (usually when asked to look over some of Maria’s draft poems), he was no mean poet himself, published in Logos, Conversation Poetry Quarterly and in the Night Train series of anthologies.

Thanks are due to Bob Carling, who edited and designed this collection, to Maggie Drury for cover images, logo and encouragement, to the WordAid poets, and to all those who commented on these poems during their gestation and delivery: the MA in Creative Writing class at the University of Kent, 2005-2007; tutors Susan Wicks and Patricia Debney; and members of the ‘Best Words, Best Order’ and ‘Small’ poetry classes taught by Maria in 2009 and 2011.