Photo courtesy Breno Machado via Unsplash
A few weeks ago, I was reading about contemporary Irish poetry (living life in the fast lane, as always), and I learned a little bit about Paula Meehan, named the Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2013. The Irish Times had a feature about her this winter, in which Ciaran Carty wrote,
“It’s more than 40 years, and nine books, since Meehan emerged from childhood in the inner city Dublin tenements to give voice to the disenfranchised everywhere, less in anger than with compassion and an intuitive understanding that, through verse, imbued their lives and memories with mythic dignity.”
Sounds pretty good to me.
Professor Meehan’s poems are a little tricky to find–she doesn’t have an entry at The Poetry Foundation, which is my go-to poetry site, but you can read “Ashes” at Poets.org. The poem that really caught my eye was this one: “My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis,” over at The Poetry Project, which is a site devoted to Irish poetry. It’s a lovely poem, anchored in everyday detail, but transcendent all the same.
Rosemary and Reading Glasses 
I was not allowed to access your link to the poem. I don’t know if anyone else will have that problem, but i found it here: http://www.dedaluspress.com/mysteries_sample
Now that is a really nice poem. Thanks, Whatmeread, for the extra link.
You’re welcome. I loved it, too!
Thanks! I emailed it to my dad a couple days ago.
Thanks, Kay! My link in the original post is working fine, so I’m not sure what’s up. Le sigh! But it can never hurt to have an extra way to the poem!
Maybe there’s some reason why you can see it and I can’t. It’s not blocked by my agency, because if it was, I would get a different message. It just says I’m not allowed on their server. Another reader thanked me for the link, so I suspect that she couldn’t see the original one either. Who knows with computers?
Sounds good to me too! I will need to look her up.
Dear Carolyn,
We are so glad you’ve discovered Paula Meehan! We think she’s great, too, and not just because we publish her here in the U.S. You can find a few more of her poems on our blog, if you like: http://blog.wfupress.wfu.edu/category/our-poets/paula-meehan/.
Cheers,
WFU Press