How can we be certain of what we really know? Why does the reverie of reality seem so strange in the recklessness of our everyday lives? Not the First Thing I've Missed captures the debris and encumbrances of such questions with a wicked sense of ownership. These poems distill the upheaval that comes when delusion and reality merge, and comment on the resulting residue of self-examination.
"The more I have read of Fionncara's work, the more I have come to admire her for continuing to make me feel a bit uneasy and alert and humble. She has an edgy, lyrical voice full of disdain, despair, love, and light focused on things and people that matter. She is a writer to watch." - John Lent
"These poems are as much mini short stories as they are quirky and biting minimalist observations on contemporary living. Offering compassion, unexpected insight and humour, MacEoin transforms sadness and despair into a catalogue of memories of survival. These are stories we didn't know we wanted, nor needed, to hear." - Priscila Uppal
"How do you write about despair? Beside Rockwell's oatmeal and fishing rods, MacEoin's version of the world doesn't have a chance. Life inside and outside the institution is one proliferation of the progressive tense . . . that mutated world where present, past, and future are one. "You could call it living," moving from "bed to chair/bed to chair" where time is a "barrier to be broken" because no one wants the depressives. These poems stagger and drool. Sometimes, they brawl. Nothing like Purdy's fisticuffs in a northern bar, this landscape is inside the head, the one in the mirror, the hospital bed." - Susan Stenson