DAIR, Sky
It Takes Time to Build Castles

It Takes Time to Build Castles is a raw and evocative exploration of memory, survival, and self-reclamation. Through a tapestry of poems, Sky Dair crafts a deeply personal yet universally resonant journey—one shaped by familial bonds, the weight of inheritance, and the ever-changing landscape of home.

Set against the backdrop of North London estates, Irish heritage, and transient spaces, the collection navigates the complexities of love and loss, violence and tenderness, exile and belonging. Dair’s voice moves seamlessly between stark reality and lyrical introspection, chronicling a coming-of-age shaped by displacement, trauma, and the search for autonomy.

Themes of matrilineality, class, control, and recovery thread through the work, as Dair grapples with the echoes of the past while forging a future defined on her own terms. Balancing stark honesty with moments of quiet beauty, It Takes Time to Build Castles is both a testament to survival and a love letter to the self—one that refuses to be silenced. [publisher's note]

Published by Worms, 2025
Poetry