Draíocht

"Draíocht: An Irish Circle" is an English-language poetry collection that leads readers into the many layers of Ireland-from rain-soaked fields and Atlantic coasts to small rooms filled with song, from ruined farmsteads and flooded villages to weathered crosses and stone chambers of light. In clear, contemporary free verse, these poems explore how land, weather and story are woven together: how bog and mist can feel like memory, how pubs and wakes become rooms of warmth and grief, how abandoned houses, graveyards and famine landscapes continue to shape the living. Alongside this runs a quiet current of enchantment-draíocht-that is never showy: the presence of "the Good People" who are not named aloud, doors and paths that are avoided out of respect, thin places where the everyday world feels only one layer thick. The book moves through six interlinked spheres that follow a loose arc: from the breathing land and the texture of Irish weather, through community, stones and famine-shadow, to the threshold of the Otherworld and the ancient mounds of Brú na Bóinne, where winter light enters a chamber of stone. Rather than offering explanations or folklore glosses, the poems invite readers to walk, listen and stand still-to feel how fracture and belonging, loss and quiet magic coexist in the same landscapes.