Catherine Phil MacCarthy
Catherine Phil MacCarthy is a native of Crecora, Co Limerick and has lived in Sandymount, Dublin, since 1987. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel, and her sixth as well as her Selected Poems, are due for publication. She was a recipient of the month-long International Writer Exchange program, travelled to Australia to Varuna, the National Writers House (NSW) in the autumn of 2022, and participated in the Blue Mountains Writers Festival. This September, she took part in readings in Washington DC, Villanova, and Princeton, supported by Culture Ireland. (Link to Events page)
Publications
 Daughters of the House |
 The Invisible Threshold |
 Suntrap (2007) |
 the blue globe (1998) |
 How High The Moon |
 One Room An Everywhere (2003) |
 This Hour of the Tide |
For more details on these publications, click the cover thumbnails.
Irish Elk
Giant antlers shine at night
diamond, sapphire,
branch in a neighbour’s garden,
light up the moonless dark
for children going to bed,
as if the Great Irish Elk,
extinct seven thousand years,
turned in his grave
beneath the lake at Lough Gur,
and bellowing rose from the bog,
to roam the hills and woods
of Ireland, ghost at large
and twice as tall as Man
come back to haunt us.
from Catherine Phil MacCarthy, The Invisible Threshold (2012), published by kind permission of Dedalus Press:
https://www.littleisland.ie/products/i-am-the-wind-irish-poems-for-children-everywhere
https://www.dedaluspress.com/product/the-invisible-threshold/