The Blue End of Stars was the winner of the 2013 Strong/Shine Award for first collection.

By conjuring seasons and landscape - and, in particular, expanses of the West of Ireland - Michelle O'Sullivan becomes a meteorologist of emotional states. Grief is a place to be departed from. Threats are at bay: 'and I don’t think anything terrible / is going to happen yet'.

At the core of The Blue End of Stars lies 'Sketches for Vincent', based on the life and letters of Van Gogh. 'If only,' she writes, 'if only I had that kind of fever', and in the stillness of these poems is a series of cries and attempts to find 'a form of utterance'. Michelle O'Sullivan puts an ear to the ground to hear it 'loosening, / spilling its beautiful cargo. In a world of clamour her poems are triumphs of contemplation. This shy, tentative, sparsely populated art explores and fixes insights into a private life.