Anthology of Letterfrack Poetry Trail
Poets Paula Meehan, Rita Ann Higgins, Moya Cannon, Louis de Paor, Michael Gorman, Eva Bourke and Michael D Higgins, Theo Dorgan and Joan Breen feature in a new book and CD being launched this Sunday, June 4, at 4.30pm in Letterfrack at Connemara Bog Week,
The beautifully illustrated anthology, published by Artisan House, is titled Letterfrack Poetry Trail and includes an accompanying CD of music.
It’s a compilation of from the public Poetry Trail in and around Letterfrack, which was launched by President Michael D Higgins in October 2014, for the 30th birthday celebrations of Conamara Sea Week. The poets had been commissioned by Conamara Environmental Education Centre, (EECC) which runs Bog Week and Sea Week, to write a piece celebrating the importance of place.
In her poem, The Boy from the Gloucester Diamond, Paula Meehan wrote; ‘on an unmarked grave we knelt and wept. . . his broken back, his small hands empty’.
CEECC invited President Michael D. Higgins to contribute a poem in 2015. He gave The Prophets are Weeping, the first poem he’d written since taking office four years previously.
All poems are displayed on plaques designed by Sven Habermann of Conservation Letterfrack. The words are engraved on wood, mounted on roof slates from the Industrial School. Three of them are in Connemara National Park, three are in the Connemara West Centre, and three in the Letterfrack village, linking the three sites.
The Industrial School which was run by the Christian Brothers from 1887 to 1974 now houses GMIT’s furniture-design campus. That resulted from events in 1974 when a group of local community activists decided to buy the building and encouraged the State to develop its lands and Diamond Mountain as a National Park. This group formed local development company, Connemara West PLC, and with community support set about transforming the former school, among other projects.
Leo Hallissey of CEECC is the person behind the Letterfrack Poetry Trail. He describes the walk as “unique and a period for reflection”.
The CD that’s with the book includes music by Co Clare’s Conor Keane, performed by 40 young Connemara musicians and their teachers, Marie Walsh, Mary Bergin, Yvonne Kane, Liz Kane and Micheál Ó Cuaig. There’s also a new version of Johnny Seoighe, sung by 16-year-old Séamus Ó Flatharta.
The Letterfrack Poetry Trail is available in bookshops and from www.artisanhouse.ie