The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven

2009-12-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

Poetry by Mairéad Byrne

I’ve had to replace my copy of Talk Poetry more than any other collection in the last couple of years – it’s walked out of my house every time I’ve shown it to someone – and I’m preparing for the same thing to happen with The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven. I think the thing I like most about Byrne’s poetry is that it makes me laugh like a monkey (baring my teeth, mad with fear, involuntary, like something being electrocuted) and like a human being (subsiding into my chair, telephoning someone to read it to them straight away) at the same time. Whether you open it on an imagistic collage or a coruscatingly funny interview, whether a hymn to the act of creation or furious, lyrical invective, it’s a beautiful, angry, generous collection and if you don’t like it you’re a fucking idiot.

—Luke Kennard, author of The Harbour Beyond the Movie

Poetry

7x5.5"

Perfect binding

about 200 pages

cover design:
Stephanie Barber

read an excerpt

Excerpts

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SPRING

March
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april

RED SKELETON INTERVIEWS NERVE ENDS,
FILAMENTS, & AN ELECTROLYTE

RS So guys …
NFE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!
RS Hey! That’s quite a shriek. Seriously guys …
NFE ccchhhggggttttcchhhh [abrupt sound made by pushing air
forcefully through cheek using reflex propulsive tongue action]
RS So you’re doing the gig …
NFE nnnnncccchhhhggggghhhhkk!!!!!!!!!!
RS Huh-huh. Huh-huh. I see where you’re going with this …
NFE EEEeee—EEeeugh—eugh—eugh—eugh—eugh
[agonizing creaking/ back-of-throat grinding]
RS Yeah I see it!
NFE SSSKKKRREEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNKKKkkk-k-k-k
[hideous chalkboard scraping]
RS I kinda see it …

About the Author

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Mairéad Byrne’s previous publications include three poetry collections, Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions 2007), and Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press 2003); seven chapbooks including State House Calendar (Dusie Kollektiv 2008), An Educated Heart (Palm Press 2005), Vivas (Wild Honey Press 2005), and Kalends (Belladonna* 2005). She is an Associate Professor of Poetry + Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.

For more information, Let Me Google That For You.

More Blurbs

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Mairéad Byrne’s poems are moving microcosms in which a keen power of observation and playful imagination fuse with the minutiae of daily life to create small missives of quirky and insightful documentation. Her source material includes everything from the weather to credit card bills to news reports to human body parts to animal pelts and all of these seemingly disparate details amass into a kind of living, breathing envelope that holds the marrow of existence itself in all its harsh reality, weird surreality, absurdity, fragility, and occasional beauty. Often funny and sometimes sobering, Byrne’s work exposes the difficult-to-reconcile distractions, detritus, and rubble that surround us from all sides, but also culls glowing artifacts from such debris.
-Juliet Cook

A modest ma(s)terwork of colors & delights, of plays of language (lost & found), the push & pull of parody, of politics & domesticities, of day to day conundrums, of observations & inventions, of the connection (as she has it) of “small things to other small things,” of the oft-derided fancy as the brighter sister of imagination. These are some thoughts that flash by while reading Mairéad Byrne’s agile, humoristic, & deceptively profound new book. The best of, surely, & with a promise of still more to come.
-Jerome Rothenberg

Upcoming Readings

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University College Dublin
Monday February 20, 2012

couscous@as220
Tuesday October 25, 2011

The New England Conference for Irish Studies
Bridgewater State University
Saturday October 15th, 2011

University of Connecticut
UConn Coop
Thursday September 22, 6pm

Boston Poetry Marathon
Saturday July 30th, 2011
Outpost 186
Inman Square
Cambridge, MA

Cousins
Sunday May 1st, 6.30pm
Abe's Bar, Wickenden Street.
Providence

couscous@121
tues april 26 8-10pm
speakeasy@local121
121 washington street
providence

couscous@121
tuesmarch 22 10-11pm
speakeasy@local121

Thursday August 12, 8pm
Belladonna* & Dusie present
The Summer Reading:
Cara Benson; Mairéad Byrne; Caroline Crumpacker; Susana Gardner; Eileen Myles; Kate Zambreno
Location: Book Thug Nation:
100 N. 3rd St;
Between Berry St & Wythe Ave;
Williamsbug, Brooklyn
Admission: FREE

Sunday August 1, 2.32pm
Boston Poet Tea Party
OUTPOST 186
186 1/2 Hampshire St., Inman Square, Cambridge

Thursday, July 29, 9pm
live giants #7
htmlgiant

blush (performance)
SoundEye Festival of the Arts of the Word
Camden Palace Hotel
July 18, 2010, 12pm

couscous@soundeye
Cork County Cricket Club
Friday July 16, 9.30-1pm

har sawylya (performance)
Greenwich Cross-Genre Festival
University of Greenwich
July 15, 2010, 12.30pm

Symposium Books
240 Westminster Street
Providence
April 29, 6pm

Poetry Project
New York
March 8, 8pm

Chapterhouse Café
Philadelphia
March 13

Places to buy a copy

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Online:
Directly from PG: $12, shipping included
SPD
Amazon

In person:
Bookhouse (Jonesville, MI)
Book Soup (LA, CA)
Carmichael's Books (Louisville, KY)
Normals Books (Baltimore, MD)
Pilot Books (Seattle, WA)
Skylight Books (LA, CA)
RISDWORKS (Providence, RI)
Symposium Books (Providence, RI)
Woodland Patterns (Milwaukee, WI)