Liz O’Donoghue’s debut collection, Train to Gorey, evokes another image of womanhood: that of the world-weary femme fatale, recounting her war stories of day-long drinking sprees and brief encounters.The poems tend to be short and pithy, revolving around a sustained metaphor, for example in Last Tango in Cork where the speaker portrays herself as a resistance fighter fighting for romantic survival, or in Albatross, where the only way out of her dilemma is to use your crossbow/and aim for the heart. The final impression is of a Corkonian Piaf, singing her well-crafted songs of love and loss on the boulevards of the Real Capital.
September 2009
