Katherine
Duffy

Katherine Duffy is an Irish poet, writer, and translator, based in Dublin. Her pamphlet, ‘Talking the Owl Away’, won a Templar Iota Shot award, and was published by Templar Poetry in 2018. Sorrow’s Egg is the most recent of her two full collections published by The Dedalus Press (Ireland). Her website address is www.kateduv.com

Katherine wrote the following about ‘Confession’:

I was raised a Catholic in Ireland, and attended convent school throughout the 1960s and 70s. I was eight when I made my First Confession, a big milestone for Catholic kids. I had to scrabble about for sins to tell, and the whole thing seemed dry and anti-climactic. At the same time, it felt slightly sinister. In my early twenties, I shook the dust of Catholicism off my heels, but now in later life, I find myself reflecting on those deeply-ingrained rituals, even missing them a little. The day that I wondered: when was my last confession, the poem began...