Recovery Community

by Conor McDonnell

In Recovery Community , physician-poet Conor Mc Donnell explores the complexities of trauma, illness and loss. Shot through with personal and professional experiences, Mc Donnell's poems recruit actors, addicts and artists to a Greek-chorus rallying drug users are serenaded by the medications that seek to trap them, Laura Palmer is released from TV to be replaced by her captive audience, Shelley Winters is raised from a succession of pre-dug Hollywood graves, and noir cinema retreats to the shadows under the glare of a 21st century lens. The poems in Recovery Community reinforce doubt and conflict as necessary tools to navigate existence, and Mc Donnell sketches a map of resilience with lines of caution that linger long after reading.

Genres: Poetry

83 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2020

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recovery Community is a ferocious and urgent collection of poems of the harm of addiction on the self and others, helplessness, sickness, injustice, life, youth, love and the arbitrariness of death. What stays with me above all else after having read these poems is the emotion: anger, frustration, grief. The yawp sounded over the roofs of the world. Recovering Community is a timely collection.

[conorpunchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, I wrote it, so duh it's amaze