Featherweight the debut poetry collection from Noelle Lynskey, was launched in her hometown of Strokestown, County Roscommon, last weekend. Published by Arlen House and capturing a lifetime of her writing, it explores themes of love, family, loss, parenting, grief, music and nature. Noelle brings the reader on journeys from Clare to Mayo, from Sligo to Cork, and to Portumna, where she lives and works as a community pharmacist. The town’s workhouse, forest and lake as well as its people, feature in many of the poems.

Featherweight is dedicated to Noelle’s late parents, with poems that reflect on her youth in Strokestown. Other verses deal with bonds of friendship, marriage and motherhood.

Noelle’s association with feathers as a symbol in her life influenced the collection’s title.

“The delightful jolt in finding a feather is similar to that landing of a line or a phrase for a poem,” she says. “And that line or phrase is what gives weight to the pen on the page.”

Following last week’s launch of Featherweight at Strokestown’s International Poetry Festival, more are planned for Portumna and Galway City. Noelle will also read at Clifden Arts Festival and Dromineer-Nenagh Literary Festival.

She was the Poetry Towns Laureate for Strokestown in 2021 and launching the book in her home place was a special occasion for this woman who’s best known as a pharmacist in Portumna and a leading light of the town’s Shoreline’s Arts Festival, as well as the Pen Pushers writing group.

Noelle, who had her first poem published at the age of 16 in Kairos magazine, graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick in 2022. The previous year, she had been commissioned by Galway City Library to collaborate with musician, Ger Fahy for the project, 1921 Dialogue Through Poetry and Music. She has also collaborated on a series of writing workshops, supported by Creative Ireland, along with poet Gerard Hanberry.  Last year, she was commissioned to facilitate workshops celebrating Portumna Library.

Noelle has judged various poetry competitions and her writing has featured in numerous anthologies and on radio.

Her next project is a collaboration with textile and ceramic artist Bernie Hennessy, at Interface Inagh, in a residency supported by the Arts Council.

Novelist Donal Ryan has described Featherweight as an ‘extraordinarily beautiful collection’, while Nuala O’Connor praises Noelle’s ‘gentle, poignant, intricate explorations of life’s bruised and beautiful moments’.

Featherweight, from Arlen House, is available in Charlie Byrne’s and other good bookshops.

Pictured: Noelle Lynskey