Dinner in the Fields (Fly On The Wall Press, UK) is a recent chapbook publication from Attracta Fahy. Attracta is a Galway based poet with a background in Nursing and Social Care. She currently works as a Psychotherapist and she is a mother of three. In 2017 she completed a MA in Writing at NUIG. Her poetry has been widely published and she has been shortlisted for the Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition 2018, and the Allingham Poetry Prize 2019.
The poem 'Dinner in the Fields' appreciates making hay while the sun shines in that it frames a memory of being brought dinner and tea in the fields while tending a meadow, 'Finally, the sunset took us home,/before another long day,/bodies stretched in the light,/making hay.' I have comparable memories of packing dinner in the boot of my mother's car and heading off to where the silage was being cut, or to where the hay or straw was being collected (1980s style). Similarly, 'Picking Potatoes' returns to the poet's rural upbringing. This poem was published in Boyne Berries and it explores a simple way of life, the gravity again of the fields where 'our young backs arched, aching,/from spreading slits'. Fahy believes in other fields or realms outside the physical world. 'Longing connects us to fields/beyond our world' and perhaps this is the battle between staying and going, the sweet tension of youth.
Tension arises in 'Etchings (IHS)' where it is described sagely and fascinatingly as something that 'cannot hear,/it cannot bear even its own silence'. This piece describes the graveyard which 'cradled' the poet's house. It is a place of solace where headstones are 'Tall slabs like brothers'. What holds the child's interest are the ancient, faded etchings of words on the stones which she traces. In 'Vigil' such tracings are described as 'time's watermark'. Fahy is interested in uncovering the past and in naming it, 'Speaking in silence, walls tell our history'. 'The Tuam Mother and Baby Home' seeks to understand a dark period of such history which was brought to light by Catherine Corless. It is a beautiful, meticulous work.
While 'The Priest Said' is almost unsayable, 'Fall on Me' is a gorgeous poem about a son leaving home which has an exquisite ending. 'Nesting' too has a lovely ending where there is a play on the word 'hearth'. 'Red' is an education on the colour. I never knew so many shades of it, crafted into lovely description here, 'Not jasper, fire opal or sard'. In 'Each Other's Opposite' I love how the poet pronounces a bird feeder a peaceful Jerusalem.
If you are looking for a book on themes of nature, rural Ireland, societal change, motherhood and ageing then Dinner in the Fields is for you. This is a lovely first offering from the poet. The poems have a wisdom and compassion that ruffle on a gentle, yet deep level. I would say that you could call them a spirit level. Seer-like, Fahy always has one eye in another realm, the place of poetry, the essence of life. In 'Sensual Nature' she asks
'What if Eros
was also a tender leaf
falling in autumn,
or a marigold,
striking light,
decomposing in soil?'
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