Egg/Shell

The Poetry Book Society Spring Choice 2024 'It is hard to hurt and then explain the hurt away / so as not to hurt anyone. But have you seen / my life?' ('Child of Lir') The lives depicted by Victoria Kennefick alter, shatter and recombine in stunning monologues, innovative hybrid forms and piercing lyrics: her second book Egg/Shell is a diptych, a double album, which explores early motherhood and miscarriage, and the impact of a spouse's gender transition and the dissolution of a marriage. Acclaimed as one of the boldest poetic voices to emerge in recent years, Kennefick, in the follow-up to her best-selling Eat or We Both Starve, breaks new ground with generosity, emotional complexity, formal ingenuity and wit.

Victoria Kennefick grew up in Cork and lives in Kerry. Her debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Butler Literary Prize. She was the UCD/Arts Council of Ireland Writer in Residence 2023 and Poet-in-Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo 2022-2024. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, New England Review, PN Review, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere.