Leaving Santorini by Heather Corbally Bryant

In her stunning poem “Visiting Lissadell”, Heather Bryant describes a woman who “would not have brought her gun, instead etched her name on/the glass pane, scratching out the letters with a large-cut diamond.”  The poems in Leaving Santorini are grounded in similarly-etched clarity, tamping down explosive despair (at a mother’s death, at adultery or loneliness in travel) then  drawing out hard-edged brilliance, radiant despite loss and risk –  poems like gems of sudden unexpected beauty.”

–Carol Anne Muske-Dukes

What I especially admire in Heather Bryant’s Leaving Santorini is the courage with which the poet engages with extremes of grief and joy (love, divorce, recovery; a mother’s death; a recuperative stay in Greece; a different sort of odyssey in Ireland), and her tenacious hold on the ordinary world in the midst of taxing emotional pressures. Admirable too is how, in grounded plain language, she can rise to touch some spiritual truths: how our departed dead can be present In the clouds, the air, the dust, everywhere; or how the recovering body can be Buoyant with the clarity of gravity and grace. The poems themselves–like a poet’s journal of sensations, observations, conclusions—hold their precious small shining moments, as a tiny bottle of coral holds her father’s spirit of adventure.  By means of the poems themselves, so, the poet achieves inner and outer clarity, and it is a gift well earned.

–Eamon Grennan

In this collection of poetry, the eighth from Heather Corbally Bryant, the reader finds a rare moral courage and honesty in how the poet deals with betrayal, divorce and suffering. Solace is found in Greece at first, where she finds she could perhaps “imagine a new universe where there was more sunshine less grief”. Later poems in this book, titled, “Visiting Lissadell”fulfills a long held passion to be where Ireland’s geography, literature,customs and people are experienced. The poet is set free to “be away from the world and closer to eternity”. At last joy is found in a place where poetry is valued with generosity. These poems are a witness to loving observations from start to finish.

–Joan McBreen