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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A WHISPER RAN THROUGH LARACOR
We missed a turn or followed the wrong road
or maybe Laracor was a place that disappeared
and took with it Swift’s electric ghost.
We could not find the lovely hideaway
of light and better air where the Dean and Stella
walked together, their footfalls quiet
( he away from the Liffey’s stinking tide,
the souls in distress, vesper bells that chimed
in the parish of dens and dead-end alleys,
loves cries in Hoey’s Court ).
She, in eighteenth century bodice,
played the role of Counsellor Mistress.
Where better than Trim to take the country air,
he wrote to her in journal prose.
In Laracor she led the way to his grove
of hollies, row of willows.
The sun burned through an early mist
or evening starlings swooped in high wind.
He bowed before her, their fingers met.
A whisper ran through Laracor.
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