Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Nina MacLaughlin join us via Zoom for a conversation about, Cacophony of Bone: The Circle of a Year (Milkweed Editions).
"In poems and essays, Ni Dochartaigh writes in exquisite detail of the seasons, beginning with the 'ghost-trace, moon-white' and silent winter that kicks off a new phase of life." --Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
This is a free event.
About Cacophony of Bone
From the acclaimed author of Thin Places, a luminous day book about an unexpected year and finding home.
Two days after the winter solstice in 2019, Kerri and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways 2020 was unlike any year we had seen before. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby, longed for but utterly, beautifully unexpected.Intensely lyrical, fragmentary in subject and form, Cacophony of Bone is an ode to a year, a place, and a love that transformed a life. When the pandemic came, time seemed to shapeshift; in Kerri's elegant prose, we can trace its quickening, its slowing. She maps the circle of a year--a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life--from one winter to the next, telling of a changed life in a changed world, as well as all that stays the same. All that keeps on living and breathing, nesting and dying. This is a book for the reader who wants to slow down, guided by a voice that is utterly singular, "rich and strange," (Robert Macfarlane). A book about home--the deepening of family, the connections that sustain us.
About Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Kerri nÍ Dochartaigh's first book, Thin Places, was published in Spring 2022 in the US. It was an Indies Introduce selection for Winter/Spring 2022, an Indie Next selection for April 2022, and A Junior Library Guild selection for Spring 2022. Cacophony of Bone is her second book. She lives on the west coast of Ireland with her family.
