Bernadette McAloon is the recipient of a Basil Bunting Award and the Flambard Poetry Prize. A Queen of Rare Mutations is her debut poetry pamphlet although her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Butcher’s Dog, Mslexia and The Rialto. This elegant collection, redolent with a sense of place, conveys a past-haunted present, time embedded in the stages of a woman’s life, haunted by the old ways she tries to leave behind. There is beauty and struggle, an intimacy which invites you in, beguiles you, then presents you with difficult truths.