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“Come
with me to the rusted gates and streets of the town into this high-walled
garden...”
Eileen M. Rafferty ‘06
 Joan
McBreen, an internationally celebrated Irish poet, read a selection of
poems on Oct. 23 from her well-traversed pages of The Wind Beyond the
Wall published in 1990, A Walled Garden in Moylough published in 1995,
and her latest Winter in the Eye published this fall.
“My mother used to say it’s the banshee crying on the wind
of the North telling us who has been lost at sea that night,” McBreen
read, “until we would beg for mercy under the green quilt.”
This poem expresses the loneliness the family felt with the absence of
their father, for he had left Ireland due to the poor economy, with the
hope of finding work.
Dedicated to her husband, McBreen read, “You have followed me into
my poems, my dreams and my past to places I scarcely know of myself.”
She continued, “Here is life we are living-- not on a wind swept
beach, not on vast city streets, but here where we have chosen to be.”
All of McBreen’s poetry is focused on family, memories and relationships,
but her most recent publication also concentrates on loss and grief. In
times of hardship, McBreen found that all she could do was write: “The
spring I had wondered would you see, comes late…as others listened
to the story told of you, a story I feared you might not live to hear....”
She continued to read about the struggles her youngest son underwent while
battling cancer. Additional verses have been written in memory of close
friends that have passed away.
Originally from County Sligo, McBreen now hails from Tuam in County Galway,
where she is the mother of six children.
This reading was co-sponsored by the Irish Studies and Women’s Studies
programs.
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