He Used to Be Me

'I sit on the stone that will mark the bed of my bones. You'll find the used-to-be-me, soon, flat body, washed up, wrinkly skin. No silly grin. You'll say, What a waste of a life. Tut-tut sounds jump out. Dangle like worms from your crow's mouth ...'

Meet Daft Matt, the Mayo man at the heart of this astonishing, form-bending story, as he wanders the streets of Castlebar in search of Devil's feet – the claw marks of the cága, or jackdaws, who have spoken to him since he was a boy.



Yet Matt is anything but daft. In lyrical prose, Walsh Donnelly explores the complex workings of Matt's inner life: how he deals with the loss of his twin brother as a child, navigates the carefree days of early manhood and copes with the aftermath of the horse-riding accident that would see him incarcerated in the care system for the next thirty years. Richly imagined and beautifully written, this is a story for anyone who chooses to look beyond the surface of things.

'I used to think those claws were the only things that kept me above sea-level.'



ANNE WALSH DONNELLY lives in Mayo in the west of Ireland. She is the author of The Woman With An Owl Tattoo, a poetic memoir of her coming out journey in her fifties and the poetry collection, Odd as F*ck. She has been shortlisted for the Fish International Prize and the Frances MacManus competitions for her fiction and for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the International Poetry Book Awards for her poetry. Poetry Ireland in conjunction with Mayo Arts Office appointed her as Poet Laureate for the town of Belmullet in Co Mayo in 2021.