Anne Connolly’s first collection started with a photograph of love-in-a-mist flowers and a search for their Latin name. Many of the poems explore the theme of loyalty and love of one’s country and their inescapable link with conflict throughout the ages, balanced and rounded out by the enduring bonds of affection and parental love.

“With their engaging dialogue between the personal and the political – scathing one moment, poignant the next – these poems by Anne Connolly are wonderfully readable.”
Eleanor Livingstone, StAnza Director

“A wide compassion sings in the precise lyricism of these poems. The overriding sense is one of defiant joy in the ‘in-spite-of-everythingness that is love’ – a life-affirming collection.”
A.C. Clarke

Anne Connolly was born in Northern Ireland. Her poems have been published in the likes of Magma, Mslexia, Poetry Scotland and The Tablet. Her pamphlet Downside Up was published by Calder Wood Press in 2008. Anne currently runs the School of Poets at the Scottish Poetry Library. She is particularly interested in performance poetry, and was the winner of the Winter 2009 Glasgow Slam.