“Given the array of topics, these volumes should appeal to readers in a variety of subject areas, including but not limited to religion, mythology, anthropology, and gender studies. . . . Recommended.” – Choice

Spirituality Books

“Holy Madness” is poetry that is both personal and moves beyond the personal. O’Flaherty challenges us to consider the awful gifts that the wounded among us give. The poems are both lyrical and, as a group, narrative, and that narrative thread draws us along through the book’s many voices and visions. A profoundly moving book that asks us, as Rilke said all great art must, to change our lives.”  – Patricia Monaghan, The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit.

“Barbara Flaherty’s Holy Madness explores those impersonal inner places where madness and the sacred intermingle. Her poems give form to that experience. Their genuineness is beyond doubt, their music palpable. They speak not just to what the mind thinks, but what the body knows. For those who have experienced these regions recognition can be sudden and breathtaking. From “Ancient Wisdom”.

It is not personal. Never say “mine”.
It looks like a mirror, but it is really like a deep lake.
It feels like water, but it is actually fire.
Some sit in the flames. Others swim.
There are some who drown.

“Bluntly, many of us have friends and relatives who drown. Without flinching, and at times with humor, Holy Madness addresses that experience at the level of the sacred.” – Lorenz Gude, Publisher of “C” Magazine.

Franciscan Madness Meets the 21st Century

“800 years ago in a time of mystic renewal the first, second and third Franciscan orders were formed in a movement of divine grace. Today a fourth order emerges offering a vision and practice for a radically interfaith deeply ecumenical spiritulaity. Be prepared for that holy fool Francis to drive your mind into your heart, to challenge your religious and social conditioning, to invite you into new freedom and relationship with the Great Mystery, yourself, and all other beings.” from back cover

Explorations of the Divine Feminine: Essays and Poems in these Anthologies

 

Goddesses in World Culture 3 Volume Set. Patricia Monaghan, editor. Vol 3: Barbara Flaherty. Essay: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of a New Race. 2010

“Given the array of topics, these volumes should appeal to readers in a variety of subject areas, including but not limited to religion, mythology, anthropology, and gender studies. . . . Recommended.” – Choice

 

Irish Spirit: Pagan, Celtic, Christian, Global, Wolf-hound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2001 Essay: “We are All Natives of Somewhere”

Brigit: The Sun of Womenhood

“The sweep and breadth of Brigit: Sun of Womanhood is much like the expansive goddess herself, beautifully amplified in this collection of essays. The choice to include Pagans with Catholics, scholars with practitioners, poets with researchers – all give voice to the profound impact one fire goddess has had on the world.”  – Holli Emore, Cherry Hill Seminary

Empty Shoes: Poems on Honger and the Homeless, 2009

“151 poems about hunger and homelessness, from 80 poets.”

All profits go to programs helping the hungry and homeless.

Letters to the World. Ed by M. Richards. Red Hen Press 2008 “I’ve finally gotten the time to read Letters to the World, and just want to share with everyone the immense pleasure these poems are giving me. Most journals, most anthologies, are filled with poems that are just ok. But this anthology is brimming with writing that is so exciting, so witty, so emotionally intense, in so many different ways: it’s awesome, and I guess it is telling me that women poets collectively are the best/ freshest thing going on in the Poetry World.  – Alica Ostriker

Other Text Publications: Journals, Magazines

Poetry:

Cirque: A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim, Vol. 10 No. 1 – 2019

Poetry: Sin Fronteras Journal 13, 2008

Drogheda Prize Anthology, Ireland, 2007

NILAS 2004, 2005, 2006

Voices in Wartime, 2005

Icefloe: The International Journal of Poetry of the Far North 2004

Essay: Enduring Questions, ABC-CLIO, 2010, 2011

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