BLOODROOT is the debut poetry collection by former Kerouac House writer in residence Annemare Ní Churreáin. The book bears witness to the lived experiences of women, including those women who survived the Irish Mother and Baby Homes. The book also features several poems from Annemarie’s adventures in Cassadaga and on St John’s River. Doire Press publishes new and emerging writers who give voice to what it means to be Irish in a changing Ireland.

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An excerpt from BLOODROOT

Florida Wedding
on St. Johns River

As a symbol of commitment, I give you
an island

built by hand for the Seminole dead
where now among the plots
a band of horses gleams

each horse shining,each horse meaning stone.

I give you a clack-jawed gator
slipping off a glade

as from the Cypress trees, white birds scatter
like a lottery of papers
thrown up into the air outside a church.

But the church is this: the occasional sound
of an unstill bough, or an echoed bray
or an oarlapping water
over water

before the river declares
finally, you may swim.