This is the first full-length collection of poems by Heather O'Neill, a writer and performer living in Montreal. two eyes are you sleeping is a linked collection of personal and political lyrics, written in a voice that reflects both the rootlessness and violence of the urban landscape and a metaphorical brilliance that transforms the ordinary into the visionary.
These are poems of the street, poems of defenselessness, strength, perversity and generosity, poems of drug addicts, alcoholics, con-men and sexual adventurers, poems to shout out in the bathtub with the radio blaring out the song you loved when you were fourteen. Most of all they are about growing up human in the drab beauty of the city.

HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent novel, When We Lost Our Heads was a #1 national bestseller and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Her previous works include The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads, as well as Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams Of Angels, which were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. She has won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today.

Heather O'Neill's profile page

"...witty, penetrating, imaginative, visual, and emotional. "
— Canadian Literature, Autumn 2000
"...[Not] just poems.... three-penny opera, early-morning police statement and the slurring song of vagabonds like magpies on methadone."
— Matrix, Spring 1999
"...Harsh familiarity and inventive language...creates a sense of urgency....[A] poetic exploration of poverty and single motherhood."
— Montreal Review of Books, Summer 1999

“...witty, penetrating, imaginative, visual, and emotional. ”

— Canadian Literature, Autumn 2000

“...[Not] just poems.... three-penny opera, early-morning police statement and the slurring song of vagabonds like magpies on methadone.”

— Matrix, Spring 1999

“...Harsh familiarity and inventive language...creates a sense of urgency....[A] poetic exploration of poverty and single motherhood.”

— Montreal Review of Books, Summer 1999