American poet Professor Donna Potts arrived in Ireland for the first of four visits and found that poetry seemed to be at the centre of everything, from the decoration of airports to the design of banknotes. Recipient of a Fulbright Lecturing Award to University of Galway from 1997 to 1998, she found herself immersed in a culture where poetry seemed inseparable from daily life. She returned to Galway several times, drawn to the landscape that once inspired James Joyce. In those fleeting moments, the division between art and life had “faded utterly”.   Cois Coiribe had the chance to connect with Prof Potts and ask her what it was about Galway that consistently drew her back, inspiring her creative work as well as volumes on poet Francis Harvey, environmentalism, and Irish literature and trauma. Here she describes her dreamlike visits and explains how, for her, poetry became empowerment.