Caitríona O’Reilly interviews & reviews
'Geis is an outstanding achievement. It is intense, intelligent and finely-crafted poetry which is both self-examining and dazzled... by the word and the world’s beauty. It is contemporary Irish poetry at its finest.' - Lia Mills, Colin Graham and Gerard Smyth, judges of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award
UK-based Irish poet Caitríona O’Reilly published her third collection Geis in 2015. It won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, was shortlisted for the 2016 Pigott Poetry Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
ONLINE INTERVIEW
Caitríona O’Reilly was Ciaran O'Rourke's interviewee for December 2022 in Island's Edge. Read the interview here.
NEW POEM FROM CAITRIONA O’REILLY
Unlaunched Books podcast, online 6 August 2020
Unlaunched Books commissioned Irish poets Caitríona O’Reilly and Tara Bergin to write poems about lockdown during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. Both poets read and talked about their new poems, and then Unlaunched Books hosts John McAuliffe, Seán Hewitt and Victoria Kennefick discussed the commissions.
John McAuliffe mentioned that Caitríona O’Reilly’s most recent collection Geis had won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award in 2016, and was also shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize.
Caitríona read and introduced her poem ‘Wood Avens’ from 8:35. Listen via SoundCloud here.
IRISH RADIO INTERVIEW
Arena, RTE Radio 1, Wednesday 18 May 2016, 7-8pm
Caitríona O’Reilly was interviewed down the line from Lincolnshire on RTE Radio 1’s week-nightly arts programme Arena on 18 May 2016. She read and spoke about the poems ‘Ovum’, ‘Geis’ and ‘The Antikythera Mechanism’ from her third collection Geis.
‘Irish poet Caitriona O’Reilly chats about - and reads from - her latest collection “Geis” (published by Bloodaxe Books)’
Click here to listen to the interview
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REVIEW COVERAGE
Dublin Review of Books, online 1 January 2016
An in-depth essay review of Caitríona O’Reilly’s Geis went online at Dublin Review of Books on 1 January 2016.
‘Somewhere in the formal mastery of these poems is the awareness of their own fragility, of the need for art to take risks in its navigation of reality and imagination. It is this testing of boundaries that makes Geis a work of great aesthetic and intellectual range, and marks O’Reilly as a sustaining presence in contemporary poetry. – Dr Lucy Collins, Dublin Review of Books
Read online at DRB here.
Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 119, Winter 2016
Caitríona O’Reilly’s 2015 collection Geis was given an excellent review by Sean O’Brien in issue 119 of Poetry Ireland Review.
‘Geis is a welcome return from Caitríona O’Reilly. Her third collection takes its title from ‘a supernatural taboo or injunction on behaviour’, and the book operates in terrain where experience and imagination often take on the contours of myth… Geis is not a book of explanations, though O’Reilly’s wide learning and infectious curiosity are often apparent… O’Reilly is an outstanding poet in her generation.’ – Sean O’Brien, Poetry Ireland Review
[06 May 2016]
