Misery Islands

At the center of her second book are two islands off the coast of Salem, Massachusetts, through which O’Neil finds the rough terrain of marriage and what it means to love in the face of adversity. She navigates the waters of transition with exuberance and reflection, and discovers new ways to make the ordinary extraordinary.

January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. The former executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, she currently serves on AWP’s Board of Directors. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a cowinner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was also the 2019–2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

O’Neil candidly writes about family . . .of single-motherhood and of love, and in doing so penetrates the exquisiteness of the everyday while also highlighting the challenges of living as artist and mother. Indeed, there is fine balance of imagery and story and song that makes this a fine collection to own, to read back one’s own solitariness, one’s own joy.
— Major Jackson

In her remarkable second book of poems, January Gill O’Neil bravely explores some difficult territory: the world of underpaid and under-appreciated labor, women and their bodies in various states of illness and discovery, the painful process of divorce and its aftermath. But for all the fierce reality, with its attendant grief and occasional anger, there is no lasting misery in Misery Islands. In addition to the pleasures that leap forth at unexpected moments and the “silver linings” of divorce that are the poet’s children, O’Neil’s vivid language and beautifully structured poems make Misery Islands a joy to read.
— Martha Collins

November 2014
78 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
978-1-933880-46-4