Gearoid O'Brien poet and broadcaster. His poems have appeared in Neptune's Kingdom, Prospice (Scotland) and Poetry Ireland Review (Dublin). In recent times he has had work published in Abridged (Derry), Revival (Galway), Ropes (Galway), The Stony Thursday Book (Limerick) The Blue Max Review (Fermoy) and the anthology 'I Live in Michael Hartnett'. He won the Desmond O'Grady International Poetry Competition in 2013 and the Hanna Greally Literary Award for Poetry in 2015. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2016 for his poem in The Shot Glass Journal # 18. He works as a librarian in the public library service in his native Athlone.

Gearoid O'Brien

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Lines for my Mother

You had the names of all your flowers
Arabis, aubretia and aquilegia

But when it came to those dull purple
Pendulous heads you often softened it
To granny's bonnet or columbine

And still, trice-named, they bloom
In our garden, recalling yours

A swathe of pretty wind-blown bonnets
Self-seeding, propagating your memory.