Avail

Introduction by Ange Mlinko104-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882096Publication Date: 1/20/2026 (available for preorder)In Avail, Erin O'Luanaigh's breathtaking debut poetry collection, the young poet charts her life during and after its transformation by illness. Avail features a long prose-poem which titles the book and winds through sections of lineated, often formal poems. The prose-poem comprises a series of lyric meditations on the image of the veil—from religious and cultural veils, to veils imbedded in idiom and metaphor, to veiled women in art and classic films, to veils drawn and parted by illness and death—which slowly divulge the harrowing details of the poet’s blood disorder.  Throughout, allusions to classic film, literature, and art serve as the “veils” with which the poet attempts to obscure the self-estrangement and vulnerability her illness has induced—insecurities which follow her long after her recovery. In a poem about a break-up set during her career a