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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KNIGHTSTOWN
When mid-August masquerades
as two seasons, I want to be back
in the turf-smoke kitchen of her house,
watching the hours change,
the bread rise, stretching my hand out
for the first crust, the first taste.
I want to be safe in the old iron bed,
listening to the night visitor
who never knocked just lifted the latch,
never learned how to whisper
or speak without cursing
the wet summer, the late crops.
I want to stand in the yard,
alone with the stars of Heaven –
seven of them sisters;
travel the roads under rain-rinsed trees
then cross the boundaries
into the field of a thousand thistles.
In the breathing space at day’s end
I want to sit in the chair under the lamp
with the ghosts of the dead
who sat there before me but vanished
before they could take me by the hand,
tell me about the lives they had led.
Knightstown
Watercolour on paper
14.5 x 20.5 cm
2016
22
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