Glass Emily Cooper

Glass is the debut poetry title from Emily Cooper, a writer and poet from Ireland. Cooper’s poetics masterfully create a compelling space that deliberately excludes wide views—instead bringing her pen up close to a dilapidated house in a small rural town with its own personality. The traces and presence of those who have existed in those spaces—real and imagined—become interdependent in the narrative. Rural, intimate, isolated and hospitable, she ponders the context of ownership of buildings in A fountain pen slices my leg through a bin bag as I move into my new house, and celebrates the old ones collapsing along with their social history. A tunnel of light, the vulnerability of garlic charcoaling in hot oil and the layering dust in-between floorboards are intercut with quiet moments of solitude, affection, disappointment and intimacy. Outside of these spaces of physical realities, there is a strong sense of affection for the enduring landscape of Donegal. Her poems are peppered with the idea of possibilities, of parallel lives and the potential for futures unknown and unseen.

Emily Cooper is a poet and writer whose work has been published in the Stinging Fly, Banshee, Hotel, Poetry Ireland Review and Bath Magg, among others. She has been granted residencies and funding by the Arts Councils of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Irish Writers Centre, Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, Greywood Arts and Donegal County Council. In 2019, Emily was a recipient of the Next Generation Award and took part in Poetry Ireland Introductions. She lives in Ramelton, Donegal.