The Bone Folder is Cait O’Neill McCullagh’s debut collection of poetry which explores loss, war, illness, the fragility and durability of bone, and so much more. Published by Drunk Muse Press, every page is a lyrical delight. Repeated ideas are woven into the text, threaded through one poem only to reappear in another; ‘your heart would not fill a thimble’ is such an achingly beautiful phrase, making us think of loss and the tiny beginnings of life. The poems are at once visceral, tender and unafraid. She describes a ‘chemo lounge’ as ‘the source’ and ‘a wellspring,’ which I found to be an utterly empowering and heartbreaking analogy – as well as a new way of looking at the horrors of a modern disease.
In ‘Night and the Body Radiant’ Cait takes the word ‘radiant’ and plays with it in such a way that will resonate with so many people, turning it on its head, inviting us to look through a different lens. And then we come to ‘I Crawl Because This is My Home,’ where she writes about war as we experience it, with a screen between us and it, in language that devastates with its accuracy: ‘light caved/ in walls wave-swept with tears.’ When she describes a woman who ‘climbs into the earth’s womb, eats its wreckage, buckets the spoil,’ because she has no choice, her home reduced to rubble, we all recognise that shocking and visceral image from TV footage. In ‘Irpin’, Cait writes of ‘the bladed weight of war,’ and a woman barely surviving ‘all her clothes worn together.’ Current, searing, deliciously mesmerising, I found myself reading each poem again and again, returning to the source. Lyrical, relevant, this many-layered composition is one I shall cherish. There is so much to explore here, so much to be moved by.
Alex Nye
Alex Nye is an author of literary, historical, gothic and children’s fiction. Her first novel for younger readers, published by Floris in 2006, won the Royal Mail Award and the Scottish Children’s Book Award. Her most recent titles are Even the Birds Grow Silent and Gallow Falls. She is currently an Advisory Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund.