Annmarie O'Connor

Featured author for May 2001.

Writing interests: Poetry

I.D. Theory articles: "Morning Coffee" | "Dogstar"

The who, what, where, when, how and why:

Annmarie O'Connor hails from Long Island, New York, but has been living in Ireland for nearly 17 years. With a mother from Inishbofin and a father from Brooklyn, she seems to literally be caught between "a rock and a hard place"! If you ask her what nationality she considers herself to be, don't be suprised if the answer is "a cross-cultural hybrid."

She attended University College Galway where she read English and Italian at B.A. level and Literature and Publishing for her Master's. She also studied Italian Renaissance theatre for a year in Bologna where she cultivated her love for all things Italian (which currently includes The Sopranos).

She is currently working for an e-publishing company and is a freelance contributor for The Greenwich Village Gazette. She has also taught at both third and second levels and apparently suffered an ill-fated stint as a recruitment consultant selling human chattel.

Her passion is writing poetry, which she has been doing since living in Monza, Italy, in 1998.

Her work has been featured in Write Here! Right Now!, Manifold, Voyage, Mslexia, Lexikon, Snakeskin, The Gentle Reader, Purr, Scriobh, Coil, Triplehitter, Identity Theory, Poetry.com and in two anthologies: The Silence Within and In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself.

Fave Writers:

Douglas Coupland, Bret Easton Ellis, Umberto Eco, Ariel Dorfman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Oliver Sacks, Walter J. Ong, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Italo Calvino, T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats.

Fave Artists:

Louis Le Brocquay, Francis Bacon, Amadeo Modigliani

Poetic Influences:

Her influences as a poet are her own personal experiences. She paraphrases Coupland in referring to them as "these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives." (Life After God, p.255)

Positive Forces:

God, Angels, Mom, Diet Coke, multivitamins, Nurofen Plus, coffee, chi, medieval aesthetics, postmodernism, independent theatre, sunshine, cats, stuffed olives, kissing, jellybeans, six degrees of separation, sesame street, creativity, friends, synchronicity, wisdom, my blue fleece, a beach and a good sleep.

Quotes:

"I see myself as half narrative...contentless form...I must compose myself."

John Barthes, Lost in the Funhouse

"The only thing that is immune to change is our desire for meaning."

Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

Contact Annmarie at amsym4@hotmail.com.

Annmarie's stuff: "Morning Coffee" | "Dogstar"