Recovery Community

In Recovery Community, physician-poet Conor Mc Donnell explores the complexities of trauma, illness and loss. Shot through with personal and professional experiences, Mc Donnell’s poems recruit actors, addicts and artists to a Greek-chorus rallying call: drug users are serenaded by the medications that seek to trap them, Laura Palmer is released from TV to be replaced by her captive audience, Shelley Winters is raised from a succession of pre-dug Hollywood graves, and noir cinema retreats to the shadows under the glare of a 21st century lens. The poems in Recovery Community reinforce doubt and conflict as necessary tools to navigate existence, and Mc Donnell sketches a map of resilience with lines of caution that linger long after reading.