Cork author: 'There isn't enough discussion about fertility problems'

Cork poet Lauren O’Donovan, who was the winner of the recent Fool for Poetry International Chapbook competition run by the Munster Literature Centre, says her subject matter in the small poetry book includes women’s struggles.

Lauren, 39, explores motherhood, fertility and nature in the chapbook, entitled Superposition.

The poems are written in sequence over 12 months - a kind of year in the life of the writer. Lauren tracks her journey through secondary infertility, IVF, and motherhood.

The prize comprises publication in Southword (a Munster Literature Centre journal), €1,000, and includes participation in the Cork International Poetry Festival.

Lauren, mother of eight-year-old Rosie, is pregnant with a child conceived through IVF. She feels there isn’t enough discussion about fertility problems although it’s becoming “more of a common story”.

She cites fellow poet, Victoria Kennefick, as a writer who tackles the issue and is “very open about the challenges she had with secondary infertility”.

As well as Superposition, Lauren’s other chapbook, Taxidermy Heart, was published in April by Cork City Library with funding from Creative Ireland.

Launched at the Cork World Book Festival 2025, it was originally the winner of the 2023 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. But that award doesn’t include book publication so Lauren was delighted when the library service decided to publish it.

“They did an absolutely beautiful print of it through Badly Made Books,” she said. “The two chapbooks were published just a month apart.”

Lauren explains that when a chapbook or pamphlet is published, comprising 15 to 25 poems, the poems are often reproduced, with other poems, in a first collection.

“I would like to expand Superposition into a two or three year series and make it my first collection. That’s a process I’m working on at the moment.”

A “grateful recipient” of development funding from Cork County Council and the Arts Council, Lauren is also currently working on a science fiction novel. She says: “It’s very dear to my heart. I’m pretty much finished the first draft. It will take another year or two to edit it.”

Does she prefer writing poetry to prose?

“It was my childhood dream to write science fiction and fantasy novels. But I really love poetry. Prose and poetry are very different.

“With a small child and another one on the way, I think poetry is that little bit more accessible whereas the novel is a big commitment, a big discipline.”

Lauren, who lives in Carrigaline, started writing poetry when she was a teenager. She gained a BA in English and philosophy at UCC – and then took quite a swerve.

“I took some good or bad life advice and went into computer science. I did a Masters in it and myself and my husband went to Canada for ten years where we worked in computer science.

“I always had an interest in computers. My father got a computer when I was very young so they were in my life. Working in computers was a strategic job choice.

“When I finished my degree in English and philosophy, I worked at a minimum paid job for a year. I struggled to find work.”

Lauren and her husband emigrated in 2009 and returned to Ireland in 2019 with their daughter.

“I went back to UCC and did the Masters in creative writing. I absolutely loved it. It was a hard year because of covid but we were lucky in that, for the first semester, we were allowed on campus. I got to meet the class and the teachers in person. They were a fantastic group.”

While working in Canada, Lauren wrote on the side. She was part of the NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month).

The idea behind this community organisation was to write a novel in the month of November.

“I achieved it once in five years,” said Lauren. “You have to write 1,667 words every day in November which brings you to 50,000 words. You can’t edit it; you’re writing all those bad words until the end of the first draft. The focus was on breaking through writer’s block.

“It was a great community at the time and it kept me writing while I was in Canada.”

Asked if she awaits the muse to ignite a poem or whether she writes every day, Lauren says: “It’s a bit of both. I try to write every day even if it’s just in the notes app on my phone.

“I’m constantly on the notes app, making snapshots of the day or little observations. I’d say 99% of them are absolutely rubbish.”

Writing about fertility and motherhood, Lauren says every woman she meets has some kind of story related to these topics.

She also reflects on “the complexity of childrearing”, adding: “I’m a millennial. We were parented in a particular way.

“Our parents might have been very authoritarian in the ’80s and ’90s. But now there’s gentle parenting and the internet telling us what to do all the time.

“It’s a struggle. It has always been a struggle to parent.

“Since the dawn of time, there has been pressure, but so much joy as well. It’s what we see in nature; life and death, the cycle of things.”

Lauren, who co-founded ‘HOWL New Irish Writing’ with Roísín Leggett-Bowen and also works on online poetry events with Lime Square Poets, says Cork is a very welcoming and ive place for writers.

She praises key organisations and people involved in the literary scene, including the Cork World Book Fest, the Munster Literature Centre, Ó Bhéal, Patricia Looney from Cork City Library and the Masters in creative writing at UCC.

Lauren also says that John Breen, manager of of Waterstones in Cork city, “does great launches,” adding: “Waterstones are a big bookshop but they really local writers.”