Into the Night that Flies So Fast
(Dedalus Press, 2024)
In Into the Night that Flies So Fast, the debut collection of poems from Belfast-based Milena Williamson, the speaker journeys to the small County Tipperary village of Ballyvadlea, to investigate the life and death of Bridget Cleary, in 1895 burned to death by her family on suspicion of being a fairy changeling.
Fusing docupoetry and true crime, travelogue and drama, the book introduces a compelling cast of characters as the ill-fated Bridget, her family and members of her community all come onstage to give their versions of events. In the ‘Interval’ of this play for voices, the speaker herself draws back from Bridget’s story to reflect on her own new life in Ireland, on the relationships and journey that have brought her to this interrogation of one of the darkest episodes in Ireland’s past.
"In the last few years, horror has had a glow-up – we're going with 'femgor'... Melding together true crime, a travelogue and a deep dive into the lies people tell to excuse their treatment of strong women, this slim book of poetry is fascinating and beautiful."
~ Francesca Brown, Best new horror books for 2024 in Stylist
"This is a debut in which execution matches ambition – a rare and promising thing."
~ Jessica Traynor, Magma Poetry
"Bridget's own voice closes this probing and lyrical collection, underlining the tension between recorded fact and the experience of it."
~ Vona Groarke, The Irish Times
"Williamson...asks[s] us to consider what kind of document the poem is, testing the power of poetry's prestige, its ability to make us feel."
~ Grace Wilentz, Poetry Ireland Review
(Green Bottle Press, 2022)
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“This gregarious, tender pamphlet criss-crosses the Atlantic: in Pennsylvania, a motorist and coachman each 'looks up from his century'; in Belfast, the poet searches 'for something déjà vu' among the musics and idiosyncrasies of Belfast. These poems are as infused with the cadences of the city and its poets as they are by half a century and more of American history. The Vietnam War – to which the author’s father was a conscientious objector – is here in the genetic code, so too the trauma of Europe’s wars, and the anxieties and terrors of post-9/11 America.
Across the continents, among their people, through language luminous and formally controlled, the war poem and the love poem cohabit and, as they must, coalesce.” ~ Stephen Sexton