Spun-Yarn and Spindrift

Spun-Yarn and Spindrift gathers poems written in the shadow of the Great War, when Ireland's hillsides held both ancient magic and fresh graves. Norah M. Holland weaves her verse with the patience of someone who understands that grief and beauty are not opposites but partners in the same slow dance. These are poems that smell of peat smoke and sea salt, that hear the spindle's hum in farmhouses where memory lives. Holland draws from the deep well of Irish folklore and landscape, but her real subject is what it means to love what time will take: a homeland, a lover, a friend, the ordinary hours that compose a life. Her language carries the weight of things unsaid, the longing that lives in the space between what is and what was. Some poems ache. Others crackle with quiet humor. All of them breathe. This collection is for readers who find themselves in the in-between places, who need verse that doesn't flinch from sorrow but meets it with something like grace. Fans of W.B. Yeats, Edward Thomas, and the Irish Revival will recognize a kindred spirit.