Poetry review – DODDER DAUGHTER: Belinda Cooke looks at poems of loss by Nessa O’Mahony which are enhanced by their surroundings, both domestic and natural
Dodder Daughter
Nessa O’Mahony
Salmon Books, 2026
ISBN: 978-1915022936
£12.50
In Nessa O’Mahony’s Dodder Daughter loss dominates – that of parents, and poet friends and reflections on the poet’s own aging, and its impact on marriage. The Pandemic backdrop adds to the poignancy. In the face of all this, her trademark passion for Ireland’s landscape is both a panacea and uplifting reminder of what endures. Her three-sectioned structure begins with these close personal events, followed by a walk along Dublin’s River Dodder, concluding with the landscape poetry, this last including a number of particularly affecting elegies on poet friends.
Section one, “Mother and Daughter”, gives us masterly concrete detail, on the recognisable irritant of dodgy furniture in the family home to celebrate and grieve for her lost mother: ‘..felt / the gilt force of its warped shaft / resist my efforts to retrieve / what had been lost. (“Close(t)”) The wordplay of ‘close(t)’ encloses a cornucopia of literal and metaphorical juxtapositions all feeding into the scary unknown of her life when her mother passes away. Wide awake, she recalls childhood conversations against the background of familiar house sounds and sights: ‘at the front of the house, / where the door still rattles / and streetlight seeps / through torn nets.’ (“Sleeping Over”) She concludes with an aching expression of child loss as her mother charges down: ‘My mother is switching off. / Systematically, steadily, switch by switch. This is just like the closing up of the house captured with the following stark coldness: ‘ No matter. You’ll wake to a cold house, / no dial tone, a doorbell mute no matter / how hard you press it, the digital clock blank.’ (“Charging Down”)
The two remaining sections will have all Ireland lovers pining for home as O’Mahony races across her loved locations. “Dodder Daughter” is a single sequence that takes us through the river’s varying urban and rural locations and changing groups of people along its banks. The final section, “On the Edge” further trails urban and rural settings from Dublin’s Rosie Hackett Bridge, out to the Dublin Mountains, and on to the Wild Atlantic Way.
The three beautiful elegies in this section are enhanced by the way they all draw on landscape: The first is to the poet Marian Lovett: ‘So take this with you: / a hedgerow of purple loosestrife; / the sun-warmed, lowering sky;’ (“Gallaun”); then comes one to Breda Wall Ryan praising her ability to reveal the natural world to others: ‘you gave us the reason to pause and listen. / a tiny bird, breast red and damp with November, / hopped to the wheel of your chair.’ (“Audience at the Botanic”). The third is to Eavan Boland in tribute to her writings on the true history that lies beneath what is recorded – here as speaker for the unnamed dead in “Cillín”, (an unmarked grave): ‘…a small bundle of cloth. / Unnamed, even in God’s / eyes, but remembered.’
Landscape has always been important to O’Mahony intertwining the scrutiny of the scientist and philosopher:
you watch the sea
for the illusion of difference
that each and every wave
is a variation to the tides
(“Valentia Duo”)
In “The Dreaming Octopus” simple wonder, leads to unpicking the mystery: ‘her mantle aerates / the dream into indigo, blue, / the most vibrant purple ever seen…’ And although she seems to have a growing concern about aging, landscape will always sustain her, her go to place of pleasure and meditation:
let the slow rhythm of step after step,
pebble after rock after pebble,
give distinction, let shapes emerge
and form into sea-glass, shells
gaping crabs, innards violet.
(“Things for which there is no longer purpose”)
Sep 4 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Nessa O’Mahony
Poetry review – DODDER DAUGHTER: Belinda Cooke looks at poems of loss by Nessa O’Mahony which are enhanced by their surroundings, both domestic and natural
Dodder Daughter
Nessa O’Mahony
Salmon Books, 2026
ISBN: 978-1915022936
£12.50
In Nessa O’Mahony’s Dodder Daughter loss dominates – that of parents, and poet friends and reflections on the poet’s own aging, and its impact on marriage. The Pandemic backdrop adds to the poignancy. In the face of all this, her trademark passion for Ireland’s landscape is both a panacea and uplifting reminder of what endures. Her three-sectioned structure begins with these close personal events, followed by a walk along Dublin’s River Dodder, concluding with the landscape poetry, this last including a number of particularly affecting elegies on poet friends.
Section one, “Mother and Daughter”, gives us masterly concrete detail, on the recognisable irritant of dodgy furniture in the family home to celebrate and grieve for her lost mother: ‘..felt / the gilt force of its warped shaft / resist my efforts to retrieve / what had been lost. (“Close(t)”) The wordplay of ‘close(t)’ encloses a cornucopia of literal and metaphorical juxtapositions all feeding into the scary unknown of her life when her mother passes away. Wide awake, she recalls childhood conversations against the background of familiar house sounds and sights: ‘at the front of the house, / where the door still rattles / and streetlight seeps / through torn nets.’ (“Sleeping Over”) She concludes with an aching expression of child loss as her mother charges down: ‘My mother is switching off. / Systematically, steadily, switch by switch. This is just like the closing up of the house captured with the following stark coldness: ‘ No matter. You’ll wake to a cold house, / no dial tone, a doorbell mute no matter / how hard you press it, the digital clock blank.’ (“Charging Down”)
The two remaining sections will have all Ireland lovers pining for home as O’Mahony races across her loved locations. “Dodder Daughter” is a single sequence that takes us through the river’s varying urban and rural locations and changing groups of people along its banks. The final section, “On the Edge” further trails urban and rural settings from Dublin’s Rosie Hackett Bridge, out to the Dublin Mountains, and on to the Wild Atlantic Way.
The three beautiful elegies in this section are enhanced by the way they all draw on landscape: The first is to the poet Marian Lovett: ‘So take this with you: / a hedgerow of purple loosestrife; / the sun-warmed, lowering sky;’ (“Gallaun”); then comes one to Breda Wall Ryan praising her ability to reveal the natural world to others: ‘you gave us the reason to pause and listen. / a tiny bird, breast red and damp with November, / hopped to the wheel of your chair.’ (“Audience at the Botanic”). The third is to Eavan Boland in tribute to her writings on the true history that lies beneath what is recorded – here as speaker for the unnamed dead in “Cillín”, (an unmarked grave): ‘…a small bundle of cloth. / Unnamed, even in God’s / eyes, but remembered.’
Landscape has always been important to O’Mahony intertwining the scrutiny of the scientist and philosopher:
you watch the sea
for the illusion of difference
that each and every wave
is a variation to the tides
(“Valentia Duo”)
In “The Dreaming Octopus” simple wonder, leads to unpicking the mystery: ‘her mantle aerates / the dream into indigo, blue, / the most vibrant purple ever seen…’ And although she seems to have a growing concern about aging, landscape will always sustain her, her go to place of pleasure and meditation:
let the slow rhythm of step after step,
pebble after rock after pebble,
give distinction, let shapes emerge
and form into sea-glass, shells
gaping crabs, innards violet.
(“Things for which there is no longer purpose”)