Poetry. "Mairead Byrne's poems are moving microcosms in which a keen power of observation and playful imagination fuse with the minutiae of daily life to create small missives of quirky and insightful documentation. Her source material includes everything from the weather to credit card bills to news reports to human body parts to animal pelts and all of these seemingly disparate details amass into a kind of living, breathing envelope that holds the marrow of existence itself in all its harsh reality, weird surreality, absurdity, fragility, and occasional beauty. Often funny and sometimes sobering, Byrne's work exposes the difficult-to-reconcile distractions, detritus, and rubble that surround us from all sides, but also culls glowing artifacts from such debris"--Juliet Cook.

Author City: Providence, RI USA

Mairéad Byrne is an Irish poet who immigrated to the United States in 1994. She earned a PhD in English Literature from Purdue University in 2001 and lives with her two daughters in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches poetry at Rhode Island School of Design. She is the author of four collections, THE BEST OF (WHAT'S LEFT OF) HEAVEN (Publishing Genius Press, 2010), TALK POETRY (Miami University Press, 2007), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions, 2007), and Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press, 2003), five chapbooks, and two plays.

Reviews and Other Links
http://www.whatsleftofheaven.com/
http://maireadbyrne.blogspot.com/
review by Steven Fama
Ashlie Kauffman at JMWW
Gina Myers @ NewPages
Michael Leong @ BIG OTHER
Michael Filippone @ Wing Chair Books [video]