Poet & Writer
Words that live at the edge of things — between silence and sound, grief and grace.
About
Iseult Healy is an Irish poet whose work explores memory, landscape, and the quiet violence of ordinary life. Her poems inhabit the space between the said and the unsaid, drawing on the textures of the land and the body's archive.
Her work has appeared in literary journals across Ireland and beyond. She lives and writes in the west of Ireland.
poems are words thick with time.
— Iseult Healy
poems are words thick with time.
— Iseult HealySelected Works
I.
My mother unravelled
like the seasons—
a breakdown for every year.
She'd slip on that vacant stare
like her yellow summer dress,
then sink into nowhere,
folded neatly in her chair.
The signs were familiar—
a hush before the storm,
the smell of bleach
then the undertow of sorrow.
No daughterly gift, no gesture
could pull her from its depths.
When departure loomed,
she lingered in the tear-stained
lounge – her bed
stalled between here and gone.
Then morning—
they always came in the morning—
she'd shuffle out to her waiting 'driver',
a passenger on the short road
to her Downton daydream,
where the nurses played nobility;
she mistook their kindness
for some lost inheritance.
She always returned—
softer, quieter,
a little less herself.
Until one day,
she did not.
II.
When I land in Carrowkeel
I long for time in that hill of Kings,
to rest in their simplicities till
the stone mound numbs my mind,
siphons me to silent, dignified death.
Where the stone centurions stand sentry
and I come as outcast, exiled, until I cry—
royalty I am not, but descendant I am.
Do not orphan me, Carrowkeel Kings,
for I kept the tongue. I tell of you still.
The tomb holds no pity for its own—
Yet I am its own, and I have not forgotten.
* Carrowkeel is a megalithic tomb in the west of Ireland
III.
To the east are the high walls of the asylum,
protected by men in blue coats behind huge gates.
This is the Road of Nightmares.
To the south is my grandmother's house
of tea cups and saucers, no crusts.
This is the Safety and Certainty Road.
West leads to the city
of cinemas and shops,
cream buns and moving cribs.
This is the Treat Road.
To the north is the unknown place
of the big houses owned by Protestants.
This is the Foreigners' Road.
Inside is too small to know.
This is the Not Yet Road.
Outside is the shy face, the silence, the obedience.
This is the Acceptance Road.
Below is the fiery pit in the deep dark.
This is the Behave Road.
Above, the Spirit constantly watching.
This is the Road to Heaven.
Through is the place I cannot see yet.
This is the Someday Road.
Bibliography
Achievements & Recognition
Sligo Arts Service in partnership with The Arts Council
Featured Poet — 13 June 2020
Co-operative chapbook — placed in top five
Featured recording
First collection of contributors' works
Journals & Magazines
Scotland
USA
Mexico
Ireland
USA
USA
UK
Ireland — first collection of contributors' works
Ireland
Ireland
Get in Touch
iseulthealy[at]gmail.com
or call
089 434 1046