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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ON THE FARM
Don’t look for those not here: the people
from the year the willow trees were planted
and another room was added to the house.
Don’t look for the egg box
that was never empty but always replenished,
loose straw that sailed across the threshold;
the wardrobe crammed with crinoline
and cotton dresses, the suits with stripes
and wide lapels, porter stains and elbow patches;
the bad luck that came and went
and came again, the letters
kept in envelopes with foreign stamps.
They lived a life of chance and whatever
tradition demands; their fasts were long,
table talk began with a pinch of salt.
Don’t look for signs of blessings, ordeals,
what caused their troubles.
Someone has planted a lawn where once there was
a garden of potato furrows.
There is nothing left and no one to tell
of the drudgeries of pulling weeds:
Where one was plucked the next day two appeared.
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