Do our passions control us or us them? These poems find themselves asking such questions in hospitals, in cellars, in Parisian parks and American laundromats, inside our screens and beyond them. Poems of blood and birdsong, of rain and desire, of aftermath and ambivalence, each spoken by a voice, which – like the starlings – sings, at once, both past and present.
“Looking into the dark sky of history, Doireann Ní Ghríofa calls up an illuminating fire, a night constellated into images of passion and destruction. An astrologer of the body, its endurance and its vulnerability, Ní Ghríofa is a poet of daring skill. Lyrical, searching, and enchanted, To Star the Dark is a blazing, brave collection.” — Seán Hewitt
“To open Doireann Ní Ghríofa's 'To Star the Dark' is to see a negative of the night sky, spare black type starring the pale page... underpinning tremendous expression of enigmatic time.
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— The Irish Times
“The poems in 'To Star the Dark' are playful, serious, joyful, and moving – exploring Eros, the body, and history in language which savours its own rhyme-full richness” - The Irish Independent
“haunts me still… A voice to treasure.” (Lunate magazine Books of the Year)
