'Between Two Skies' | ISBN 978 0 645797 787 | 54 pgs | August 2024
Between Two Skies is a pilgrimage to home, family,
memory, nature: a mindful journey between Cairns’
adopted home, Western Australia, and her cultural
home, Ireland.
Her poetry speaks in colour and sound: white,
middle grey, clouded skies. A poignant, insightful
view of life, past and present. Delve into a ‘fathomless
infinity of space’, breaths so intimate, so gentle that
light ‘the earth for days’. A beautiful, meditative, read.
Rose van Son, Poet and Writer
There is immense care and craft shown within these
poems. The use of diction and imagery is stunning,
such as in “Heart Beat” – “Here peat, still pliant, cradles
flesh/ that waits/ for the high-hawk cry of the uilleann
pipe”. And the interplay between Irish and Australian
settings is deftly handled. A collection to savour.
Kevin Gillam
Now living in Perth WA, Kay Cairns is an Irish born poet who
grew up in 1970s Belfast during ‘the Troubles’. During that time
she studied English, French and Russian literature at Queen’s
University of Belfast, where she was fortunate to have had the
opportunity to attend readings by poets Seamus Heaney and
Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
Kay emigrated to Australia in 1983 and began writing ‘for real’
during her long service leave from teaching in 2001. She began
by writing fiction, but in 2003 began to write poetry. Her first
poem, 'Exit Wounds', written after attending a Juice writing
retreat workshop run by the late Andrew Burke, went on to win
the Tom Collins Poetry Prize in 2004. In 2024 Kay received
a commendation in the same competition with her poem
'Looking for the River', and her poem Wacol Migrant Centre was
highly commended in the Spilt Ink Poetry competition 2018.
Kay’s poetry has been published in Quadrant and in Australian
poetry journals and anthologies such as Famous Reporter, Poetica Christi,
Indigo, The Weighing of the Heart, Poetry D’Amour, Tempus,
Locus, Cuttlefish and most recently Brushstrokes and the
Liquid Amber Poetry of Home anthology. She also presents
creative writing and poetry workshops at Peter Cowan Writing
Centre and has been guest poet and regular open mic reader at
WOW (Walking on Water, 2005), Supper Club and Voicebox.
In her poetry Kay draws on strong emotional relationships
with people and places, aspects of the natural world often
triggering connections with life experiences. Her poems also
explore political or cultural themes and her relationship with
Australia and with her country of birth.