Description
In Hymn to All the Restless Girls, Annemarie Ní Churreáin continues to trace the personal in public tragedies and to transmute them into fiercely dramatic poetry. Celebrating the rebel spirit of the restless girl, sometimes known as a troublemaker but valued as a truth-teller, she offers prayers of defiance, sacraments of identification, howls of protest and lyric flights. Poems with the force of charms cast their gaze in all directions as they castigate the history of the Irish State (the ‘Free’ State) and the Catholic Church and find ways to thrive beyond cruel experience. Folklore, including superstitions, Irish words and the atmosphere of rural life imbue poems of empathy for the ‘girls in trouble, sinful girls, the fallen’ and emigrants forced to leave. Taking bearings from the ancient art of fiachairecht, the practice of looking to ravens for omens and prophecy, this is a handbook of care and healing and, ultimately, reclamation.
. . . The cure of breath is given
like a stream of foals passing
through the creaking pines.
— ‘The Handywoman Tends to a Sickly Child’
Hymn to All the Restless Girls is Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s second collection published by The Gallery Press.