“I’d better get back to work or my daughter will sack me,” jokes Noelle Lynskey, as she leaves Portumna Golf Club where she’s been taking her lunchbreak and discussing her debut poetry collection, Featherweight which will have its Galway City launch next Thursday night, May 29, in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.

It had its first launch in her native place earlier this month, at Roscommon’s Strokestown Poetry Festival, when she was delighted by the number of people from all the strands of her life who attended – and this is a woman with many strands in her life.

There was a fine launch in her adopted home town of Portumna last week too, with further events planned for festivals during the summer. It’s a busy time for Noelle but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She’s been writing since she was a child and has been a key part of Galway writers’ groups, including Portumna Pen Pushers and Ballinasloe Peers, for years. So there were lots of poems waiting for their moment in the sun and that’s now happened, courtesy of Arlen House Press.

Born into a family of four, Noelle’s mother Frances was originally from Sligo and her father James worked as a Garda in Strokestown. His early death was a defining moment in her young life, something she writes movingly about in the poem, Confession To My Father and its companion to her mother, Not To Be Contained.

Noelle’s primary school teachers included Sr Brigid Feeney “who nurtured my love of English. She was my teacher when my father died and was very good to me”.  In secondary, the late Jim Gibbons did likewise, expanding her passion for literature. But, even then, she had many strings to her bow.

“English and chemistry were my favourite subjects at secondary school and chemistry won out when it came to going to college.”

At UCD, as she focused on science, Noelle continued to write; “love poems for the future husband and romantic rubbish that will never see the light of day. I was writing but wasn’t writing seriously”.

After getting married, she moved to Portumna in the mid-1980s, when she worked part-time in her husband’s family pharmacy, Hayes and Hayes, and also as a locum, while rearing their family.

“Children and children’s agendas took over . . . music, singing, drama . . . .,” she says with a laugh of all their activities.

After she and her husband separated nearly two decades ago, they continued to run the business together and she returned to work fulltime. She loves her job, as can be seen in this collection, courtesy of the evocative poem Teora.

Noelle’s passion for the arts never dimmed and when Portumna hosted a street festival in the early 1990s, she supplied a literary strand, with poets including Rita Ann Higgins and Michael D Higgins taking part.

“I realised there was an appetite for it,” she says. And so, the Maple Poetry Group was born, named after the pub where members met and either read their own work or poems that resonated with them.

The street festival lasted about five years and after it petered out, Noelle helped set up an arts group, out of which grew Portumna’s Shorelines Arts Festival.

Shorelines has an annual recitation competition in memory of a much-loved member of the Maple Group, Nicholas Treacy, who died in 2010.

Noelle remembers Nicholas in the book, which is dedicated to her late parents.

A few years ago, having attended many writing workshops in Galway and further afield, she did a Master’s in Creative Writing at UL.

She hadn’t been sure about it initially, but when she raised her doubts with novelist  Joseph O’Connor, who heads the course, he advised her to do it as a gift to herself. And she’s delighted she heeded him, giving high praise to all involved.

Noelle did the Master’s part-time, although these days she has reduced her hours in the busy pharmacy, where one of her daughters, Ailbhe, has become the next generation of the family to work there. Máirín, who trained in musical theatre and performance in London, lived away for several years but has since returned to Ireland, also qualifying as a pharmacist. She and Orla, who is an architect, live and work in Dublin.

All three are involved in music and singing, something that delights their mother. She’s still involved with Shorelines Arts Festival, in a reduced role these days as she focuses on her own work.

She’ll shortly be heading to the Inagh Valley in Connemara, for a collaborative residency at the Interface studios there, with artist and fellow-pharmacist Bernie Hennessy, where they’ll explore their mutual passion for science and arts.

And she’s doing an MA in Local History in Portumna’s workhouse, in an outreach programme run by UL – the Hayes and Hayes Pharmacy archives are central to her research. Noelle is also involved in a fundraising initiative for the workhouse, a place which features in her debut collection. This woman with many strands to her life has woven them together beautifully in Featherweight.

Published by Arlen House, it will be launched at 6pm next Thursday, May 29, in Charlie Byrne’s.

Pictured: Noelle Lynskey with her debut collection, Featherweight.