Washing Windows Too: Irish Women Write Poetry

 

Washing Windows Too: Irish Women Write Poetry has recently been published by Arlen House and is available from Books Upstairs. It contains 100 new poems, selected by co-editors Alan Hayes and Nuala O'Connor, by women who have not yet published a full collection. It is the successor to Washing Windows? which was published in 2017. 

Alan Hayes’ preface on ‘Poetry, Power and Privilege’ makes for very interesting reading. In it he details the inequality of opportunity between male and female poets. He writes that 'from the 1950s onwards, conservative powerbrokers chose to champion their male peers, and in most instances female voices were silenced.' He believes that women authors today owe a debt of gratitude to Catherine Rose (founder of  Arlen House, Ireland's first feminist press), Dr Margaret Mac Curtain (feminist activist and seer), and Eavan Boland. Apparently, Eavan Boland travelled Ireland in the ‘80s giving workshops to women. One woman didn’t want to ‘go public’ as a poet because her neighbours would think she didn’t wash her windows. Hayes calls for a more open, independent and honest arts world.

I'd like to thank Nuala O'Connor for her introduction, 'A Voice Answering a Voice'. She opens 

'...let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves' Mary Oliver wrote in her poem 'Wild Geese', and what a pleasure it is for a reader to see what subjects new poets love enough - feel urgently enough about - to be moved to create poetry.

What subjects these are, you'll have to have the joy of discovering for yourself within the pages. I was more than delighted to get a mention in the introduction (along with many others) in the same paragraph as Virginia Woolf's Orlando. It was a book I read in my late teens and I've never really recovered from Woolf's soaring stream of consciousness and oft beautiful imagery. She left an indelible mark on me. She's still one of the most stylish writers out there.

Available to order here. 

Bitumen and Pitch by Eithne de Lacy

Thanks to Dr. Cathy Fowley of Silver Thread for asking me to launch Bitumen & Pitch by Eithne de Lacy. Silver Thread believe in the power of stories. Their mission is to listen and encourage older people to tell their stories, and to publish them as part of their legacy.  Their ethos is to be inclusive and person-focused. Silver Thread was founded in Spring 2017 by Dr. Cathy Fowley and Carmel Conroy, who both had a background in education for older people in third level institutions.  

In her introduction de Lacy says, "The cover of the book depicts a woven basket placed among reeds on a river, an image taken from the Book of Exodus... The Bitumen & Pitch were used to make the basket of Moses waterproof, thus ensuring his safe journey on the Nile." Further she notes, "Bitumen & Pitch ensured Moses' safety as he was passed from one mother to another...just as I was."

And so we begin the journey with the poet in this exploring collection. As a 43 year old de Lacy discovered, before her mother's death with dementia, that she had been adopted as a baby. The collection pays homage to her mother, Moyra, and her birth mother, freshly discovered, Bridget. She writes, "My pen refused to stop. It led me into an exploration of my two mothers, Moyra, the mother I knew, and Bridget, my birth mother who had died before I discovered I had been adopted. Two secrets. A hidden birth, a hidden adoption. Secrets, always secrets, the backdrop to many lives." Such words of truth. In the poem Rúnda (Irish word for secret) we find 

She named her baby

Rúnda, and though

She never suckled her

She kept her close,

And held her tight,

Cradling her in the

Pulsing chambers of her heart.

Lovingly written and produced, the collection is divided into 5 sections; Childhood, Unearthing, Mothers, And Now, and, Finally. In the last poem of the book, On Elephants, fittingly de Lacy writes

'Well done to you

And to your women folk.

So very well done.'

Bitumen & Pitch is a poetry collection and memoir of a woman relearning who she is. Calling on the Irish language, religious iconography, myths, stories and childhood, these poems, filled with scents and sounds, colour and wonder, are an exploration of a daughter, the mother she knew, and the mother she never met.

Available here.