THE YELLOW RIVER - Seán McSweeney & Gerard Smyth
The Yellow River is a tributary of the Blackwater (Kells), which joins the Boyne at Navan, County Meath that unites the personal histories of poet Gerard Smyth and artist Sean McSweeney. Gerard Smyth spent many summers in Meath staying with his grandmother and an aunt, whilst originally Sen McSweeney’s family lived in Clongill until the untimely death of his father. Over two years Gerard Smyth revisited Meath in further inquiry with Belinda Quirke, Director of Solstice, in the development of a new suite of poems, recollecting and revisiting significant sites of occurrence in the poet’s and county’s history. Sean McSweeney created new work from trips to his original home place and the county. McSweeney here responds lyrically to particular sites of Smyth’s poetry, whilst also depicting in watercolour, ink, tempera and drawing, the particular hues of The Royal County.
The Yellow River is a tributary of the Blackwater (Kells), which joins the Boyne at Navan, County Meath that unites the personal histories of poet Gerard Smyth and artist Sean McSweeney. Gerard Smyth spent many summers in Meath staying with his grandmother and an aunt, whilst originally Sen McSweeney’s family lived in Clongill until the untimely death of his father. Over two years Gerard Smyth revisited Meath in further inquiry with Belinda Quirke, Director of Solstice, in the development of a new suite of poems, recollecting and revisiting significant sites of occurrence in the poet’s and county’s history. Sean McSweeney created new work from trips to his original home place and the county. McSweeney here responds lyrically to particular sites of Smyth’s poetry, whilst also depicting in watercolour, ink, tempera and drawing, the particular hues of The Royal County.
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THE BLACKBIRDS OF WILKINSTOWN
It is spring now and it must be lovely down in
Wilkinstown. Are the birds singing yet? When you
hear a blackbird think of me.
– Francis Ledwidge
There’s a village where nothing has changed for years,
sweet pastures through which the railway track
is a memento kept as part of the scenery;
the bog where bog work was a tug-of-war,
where Ledwidge’s blackbird flaunted her song.
The gatekeeper’s cottage is gone, no need now
for the gatekeeper’s morning and evening vigil.
The trees are like trees in a Russian novel –
tall and gaunt, some ready to fall
in the next winter storm. The righteous
have their inner sanctum: the country chapel
where they pray for the bride at the altar,
the soul in the box. No spectacle ever intrudes
except when the blackbirds arrive.
Through the sweet pastures, meeting ground
of the harriers, it’s a short walk
from schoolhouse to cemetery where husbands
and wives are resting in peace
and stone walls keep a little of the sun’s day-warmth
for night that comes darkening the harvested fields.
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