Through My Eyes – Poetry by Vicky Keane

Début Poetry Collection by Irish Solicitor & Poet Offers Readers a Profound Insight into Motor Neuron Disease

Having just completed her LLM degree in UCD back in 2017, solicitor, devoted wife and loving mother Vicky McCarthy Keane received some crushing news; she had motor neuron disease (MND). MND is a terminal neurological condition that causes the patient’s muscles to gradually lose function.  While some poems in Vicky’s debut collection, poems like ‘The Day it Rained All Day’, capture her emotions on that fateful day of diagnosis, others point to future possibilities and hope. For people unfamiliar with MND, the collection will provide them with a profound insight into what it feels like to suffer from the condition.

Vicky’s language is visceral and profound, rich in symbolism, allegory and imagery, often drawing on the natural landscapes of Ireland. Many MND sufferers describe how the disease makes them feel ‘trapped’ in their bodies and locked in a battle with time, and nobody articulates this better than Vicky McCarthy Keane. Many of the poems hint at a battle with fate, richly imagined in the form of a journey, while others are dappled with light and hope, with the final poem ‘Sunset Over Fanore’ hinting at a paradise regained.

Vicky credits the great Irish writer John B Keane as the main inspiration behind her decision to take up writing after her diagnosis. Having watched a documentary where John B Keane’s son, Billy Keane, discovered an old copybook owned by his father, Vicky wrote her first poem. Since that day, she has written poetry regularly through the assistance of an eye-gaze computer. The computer is the inspiration behind the collection’s title, Through My Eyes.

Billy Keane, an early champion of Vicky’s work, remarks, ‘Vicky McCarthy Keane writes pure, tender, lucid poetry of the finest kind’. While award-winning writer and filmmaker Csilla Toldy has written, ‘Vicky McCarthy Keane’s poems celebrate love and life with a wistful gratitude only someone in her condition can know’.

The book is published by JM Editing & Literary Agency, a publishing consultancy based in Ireland. The collection is available in three editions, international paperback, deluxe edition with ‘French flaps’ available here and eBook. The international paperback and eBook is available through all major online retailers, including Amazon, Barnes And Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Books and more . The deluxe edition is available in some Irish independent bookstores, Irish websites like buythebook.ie, or directly from the publisher. If you would like to order a copy directly from the publisher, or you are interested in stocking Through My Eyes, please contact Jeremy Murphy of JM Agency at jm.murphy@outlook.ie

Most importantly, Vicky McCarthy Keane has requested that all her proceeds from Through My Eyes be denoted to the Irish Motor Neurone Association, IMNDA.