Valparaiso

O'Malley Mary

In 2007 Mary O'Malley made a voyage on the Irish marine research ship the Celtic Explorer. It took her far out into the Atlantic, and it returned her to a self and a country made strange. "Valparaiso", a collection begun at sea, is a book of searches and discoveries, plumbing oceanic depths and returning to a shore that "marks the start of possibility". The surge and swell of the sea sounds in it, a place of wonders where the imagination is freed. "What would sing in me is the deep ocean".

As the scientists chart a course dictated by the demands of research, as Ireland is careering from boom to bust, Mary O'Malley explores the science of going under and staying afloat. She returns to an altered place, and is herself changed by an odyssey that has taken her around the Atlantic and Europe, into her past and back to a kind of homecoming.

About the Author

Mary O'Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland, and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at the Universidade Nova there. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cuirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the author of its educational programme. She taught on the MA programmes for Writing and Education in the Arts at NUIGalway for ten years, held the Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2013, and has held Residencies in Paris, Tarragona, New York, NUI Galway, as well as in Derry, Belfast. She is active in environmental education, specifically marine. She is a member of Aosdana and has won a number of awards for her poetry, including the 2016 Arts Council University of Limerick Writer's Fellowship. She writes and broadcasts for RTE Radio regularly.

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