By Eoin Meegan
Having a receptive eye to one’s immediate surroundings, and then being able to translate this into words while treating the subject with keen sensitivity is a rare gift, but one which poet Mary Guckian possesses. Originally from Kiltoghert in Leitrim, Mary has travelled the world, lived variously in Australia and Britain, and now resides in Ringsend. She has been writing poetry since 1983 with Perfume of the Soil, The Road to Gowel and Walking on Snow, among her previous works, all published by Swan Press which she helped establish with fellow poet Rosemary Rowley.
Her poems have been widely published in literary magazines and newspapers, including NewsFour. Among the many accolades she picked up include the Leitrim Guardian Literary Award, 2003 and 2011, and the Golden Pen Award on Art Arena, as well as being short-listed for the Scottish Open International Poetry Award. A founding member of the Rathmines Writers’ Workshop in 1990 which she credits with helping her develop as a poet. The RWW is a recognised resource for budding writers and poets to hone their skills.
Dawn Chorus, her newest collection, offers a blend of the country and urban, the old and the new, the passing and the permanent. We are transported to the Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, a world of ploughing, harrowing, cutting turf, cleaning out a gripe, only to segue effortlessly into the bustling consumer economy we now inhabit in Charlotte Quay, Saturday Afternoon, Dandelion Market, and others. The connection, of course, is that Mary’s poems are always grounded in location, be it Joy Street, or Drumshanbo or a stretch along the canal in Dublin.
For instance, in the poem Brigid we meet an old lady rooted in the soil, living alone in her little cottage tending her farm, perhaps all her siblings have married or died.
I wonder what she thought of the news
It was never local
Always about another town,
Another city another country
But still she listened.
The news was never going to be about Brigid, yet by allowing her to be seen the poet gives her presence.
The Big Snow 1947 evokes a time when the poet was four and the country was in the grip of one of the worst storms in memory. It’s ancestral almost. We see her father shovelling the snow away from the door and making sure the cattle are fed, a kind of stoicism and grace hard to imagine today.
While Birth Certificates dips into a different aspect of our history’s past, people come up against a blank wall when they seek to find their biological parents, because of the world of secrecy and prejudice we wove around ourselves. And in that refusal they seem to lose part of their identity.
mothers not married
who had babies born
were recorded here
on birth certificates
that have stayed hidden
and access prevented.
The collection is dedicated to the poet’s sister Pauline, who sadly passed away in 1996. The title poem, like many here, tells a story; her sister in her last days with cancer, all the family home, rising and going to bed at terribly irregular hours. Then Mary hears the dawn chorus for the first time, which her sister loved. It’s like a beautiful moment of intimacy and connection.
As well as poetry the book contains some fine examples of Mary’s prose: Kiltoghert Creamery evokes the life of the creamery, the people who worked there, and of a time now lost. While Mind the Gap tells of getting up at 4.30 to travel to the fair in Drumshanbo with her father to sell a cow. Something today’s teenagers would have no concept of, but which was commonplace at one time.
Mary’s work is beautifully summed up by the writer Mary O’Donnell, she says:
“Experience has formed her and her work, her observant eye is sensitive to seasons, family rituals, and moments of life on a once-traditional Irish farm. These are not easy sentiments in verse and prose. The times so finely evoked were physically harsh, as country people eked out an existence in Irish society. Mother and baby homes flourished. There was social injustice, none of which escapes her attention. Throughout, the resonant sensibility that defines Mary Guckian’s voice is present. She shies from nothing, neither love, friendship, nor life’s daily rhythms—shopping, passing along Sandymount Strand, walking fields, even seasonal changes of clothing.”
Dawn Chorus Poems & Prose by Mary Guckian, Swan Press, with a beautiful cover by Christine Broe, was launched on Wed 2nd Oct 2024 at the Writers Centre, Parnell Sq. NewsFour was very proud to be part of the launch. The book will be available to buy in all good bookstores.
A number of poems from the collection appear in this issue (pg. 25)
