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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BUTCHER, BAKER, ACCORDION PLAYER
(1)
The butcher in his slaughterhouse apron
whistled, crooned, serenaded the hanging sheep –
anyone passing might have heard
a snatch of My Darling Clementine.
At the slaughterhouse gate
the cows were jittery, kicking, resisting,
slipping on their own foul dung
as if they sensed the butcher’s intention.
Twice a week he performed his routine
with a rope to pull the stubborn beast in,
then the mercy gun, the gutting knife.
His killing floor was like the scene of a crime.
(2)
When the breadman came with manna
and manna’s aroma, he signalled his arrival
with the sound of the horn.
His bread van was a cornucopia
of cakes and buns and loaves
still warm from Spicer’s ovens.
His knowledge of local quarrels
was what she waited for –
a rumour from another parish
or picked up from the man in the garage.
His way of telling embellished
all local tragedies, all genealogies,
what someone said to someone else,
the final shot that won the match.
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