A visually rich collection of nature photography paired with uplifting poetry, created to bring calm, clarity and quiet reflection. Set along the eastern shore of Ireland,
Dawning captures moments of light, stillness and renewal through powerful imagery and original writing.
This is a book to slow down with, to return to, and to experience at your own pace.
It reaches through the image into the reader's heart and grants a moment of stillness that few books today can offer.
Here you will find:
- Sunrise colours that feel like light breaking open hope
- Storm light that flushes stale thoughts out of the mind
- Landscapes that carry memory and whisper truth
- Quiet poems that settle the pulse and steady the heart
From the coastline of Dublin Bay and the quiet ridge of Cruagh to windswept bogland and moments of Spanish storms, each page is an invitation to pause, to breathe, to feel.
This is a book you do not finish once.
It is a book you return to.
A Journey through Image and WordEvery photograph in this collection is paired with an original poem that deepens the experience. These are not captions. They are companions.
You will walk with the wind on your back,
watch sky silver into sunrise,
notice the shape of a root clinging to earth,
feel your breath slow as light warms stone.
There are moments of storm and elements that unsettle, because real transformation rarely comes from softness alone. There is also an arc of renewal — a return to hope and new awakening.
More than a Book. A Practice.Dawning is designed to be:
- Picked up at random and felt
- Opened when the world feels too loud
- Shared with others as a gift of light
This is for the reader who wants a deeper connection to the world around them — and to themselves.
Whether you are drawn to:
• Irish landscape and elemental photography
• Reflective poetry grounded in lived experience
• Books that feel like breath in a crowded world
• Meaningful gifts for people you care about
…this book offers something genuinely rare.
A Book That Changes Your SpaceInstead of noise, it offers silence.
Instead of acceleration, it offers patience.
Instead of rushing forward, it invites you to turn toward light.
Every time you open this book, it feels like a new horizon.
Not because it changes, but because you do.
If you want a book that gives you something back every time you come to it,
Dawning is that invitation.
For the Reader Who Knows This FeelingYou might already sense it deep down — that there is a place inside you waiting to be rested, to be seen, to be ignited again.
This book will not tell you who you are.
It will help you remember.
A Book To Be Lived WithThis is not a book to rush.
Open it at random.
Let a single image steady you.
Read three lines before sleep.
Return to a blessing at turning points in the year.
As Nessa O’Mahony writes in the foreword, this collection “demands that we pause and look.”
In doing so, something subtle shifts.
About the AuthorSiobhán Maher grew up on Montpelier Hill in Dublin, where forest trails and shifting skies became her first teachers. After a scientific career and a journey through chronic illness, motherhood, and healing practice, she returned to what had always quietly sustained her: image and verse.
Dawning is her second photopoetry collection, following
Journeying — Photopoetry To Revive Your Soul.
Siobhán offers this book as a gentle invitation:
To look
To breathe
To awaken
If your soul feels tired —
Let this book be your dawn.Siobhán arrived on Montpelier Hill, Dublin, just before her eighth birthday, and it was as though the land itself welcomed her home. She blended into its wild edges, wandering forest trails for hours, dreaming on horseback or curled beside a loyal dog. Nature became her first language, animals her earliest friends.It was on this hill-beneath whispering trees and shifting skies-that she remembers penning her first poem. A child's offering, shaped from the quiet stories of two strangers: a man known locally as the Ice Man, living rough in an old icehouse, and a gentle-faced woman sleeping on cardboard outside a city hospital. Siobhán had spent long spells behind those same hospital walls, and something about their presence lingered in her heart, asking to be written.Though words often danced out of reach at school, tangled by dyslexia, she pressed on. She earned a Higher National Diploma and Degree from Aberystwyth University, followed by a Master's from Aberdeen. In time she became Dr Siobhán, completing her PhD in Food Science and Technology at University College Cork in 2004.Her career unfolded across laboratories and factory floors-from chocolate to bread, from research papers to product launches. But the pace was relentless, and her body, already burdened by fibromyalgia, began to slow.Motherhood arrived like a turning tide. With the birth of her first child in 2007, Siobhán made a promise-to heal, to be present, and to build a life that honoured both her children and her spirit. She retrained as a Touch for Health Kinesiologist and journeyed deeper into the healing arts: Reiki, Feng Shui, mindfulness, and shamanic practice. Each path became a thread, weaving her gently back to herself.Through every chapter, writing remained her quiet heartbeat. Scientific journals gave way to rhymed bedtime stories, and those playful verses deepened into more mindful reflections.In 2022, she began the work she had long envisioned-uniting poetry with nature photography. The book you now hold is the fruit of that returning.Siobhán offers it with a simple wish: that it brings a moment of stillness to your day, and helps your gaze settle gently, like a leaf on water.
