Athlone’s Amy set for launch of debut poetry collection

Sipping tea in Athlone's Sheraton Hotel, Amy Abdullah Barry is wearing a pin that displays the flags of both Malaysia and Ireland.

The sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of these two nations - her native land and her adopted home - loom large in the poems the Cornafulla-based writer has crafted for her debut full-length collection, Flirting with Tigers.

The book, published by Dedalus Press, will be officially launched at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin at 6.30pm on Wednesday next (April 5), and local launches in Athlone and Roscommon are also being planned.

Acclaimed Irish writer Thomas McCarthy mentored Amy during her work on Flirting with Tigers after she had been selected for the Words Ireland national mentoring programme in 2020.

Countless hours of writing and revision went into the book, so when Amy got her hands on the first few copies of it in recent weeks it was a proud moment.

"I was so delighted to get it," she says. "It was hard work. You have to really persevere and keep on going."

Her achievement in having a full-length poetry collection published is all the more impressive given that English is her second language.

She explains that Thomas McCarthy encouraged her to delve into her Malay upbringing in order to forge her own distinct identity as writer.

"I thought I was supposed to write about what people are writing about here. Thomas said, 'No, you have to write about what you are, what your experience is. You need to find a voice of your own'," she says.

Amy is a lover of travel who has previously worked in the media, hotel and energy industries. She met her husband, Michael Barry, while he was working in Malaysia.

They moved back to to Ireland together some twenty years ago, and have two daughters, Yasmine and Natasya.

Amy says she had been "a busy career woman" in Malaysia and when she came to Ireland she decided to focus on raising her two children.

Her journey in creative writing began a little over a decade ago when she attended a seven-week creative writing course in Athlone Community College.

"At that time I thought that I could maybe write a novel, and so I took that class to understand what creative writing is all about. You have to show, not tell."

From there she began writing short stories and poems, and her work started to get accepted for publication in literary journals.

Over the years, she has been published in Cyphers, Southword, Paris Lit Up, Galway Review and A New Ulster, among others, and last year was chosen for the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series. A chapbook of her work, called Spearing Dreams, was self-published in 2017.

Amy has also been active in the local artistic community in Athlone, organising poetry and music events and being involved with groups such as Making Space and Poetry in the Park.

Writing, she says, has made her a more attentive person. Several of the poems in Flirting with Tigers are adorned with observations on local life in South Roscommon. One is entitled Rain on the River Suck, while another reflects on the closure of the Cornafulla post office operated by Vincent Harney.

Her adventures and memories from Malaysia also inspired some of the book's most memorable poems. I Unfold My Own Myth explores a family legend that Amy's late grandfather had a gift for sending tigers to guard relatives in moments of distress.

Other poems recall Amy's mother, who died when her daughter was just nine years old.

When writing those poems, Amy says, "I could still see her in the kitchen, cooking away, all the smells that are coming, and still listening to her voice."

On the book's back cover, Dublin poet Jean O'Brien states that Amy's writing "moves with ease" from "her mother's and grandmother's kitchens in Penang to the hawthorn hedges and stone walls of Athlone".

Another poet, Roscommon native Jane Clarke, described her as "a distinctive new voice in Irish poetry".

As she prepares for the Dublin launch of the book next week, Amy expressed her gratitude and appreciation to Pat Boran and Dedalus Press, to artist Gaetano Tranchino who provided the artwork for the cover, and especially to Thomas McCarthy for his mentorship.

* 'Flirting with Tigers' by Amy Abdullah Barry can be ordered here.