![]() Harcourt, Esq., M.P., at Nuneham Park, Oxfordshire”, 1883, p. With the bookplate of English naturalist and Conservative politician Edward William Harcourt (included in his “Catalogue of the library of E.W. Minor chip not affecting text to leaf O3, pagination shaved in a few instances. Very light patch of running staining at head of some gatherings, but contents generally clean and fresh without any internal repair. For Gledhill Old bookseller’s note by James F. Engraved portrait frontispiece, woodcut crown device to title page. Housed in custom blue cloth chemise and morocco slipcase. Contemporary sheep, rebacked with calf in 19th century, red speckled edges. London: printed for John Williams, and Francis Eglesfield, 1648. Hesperides: or, The Works both Humane & Divine What I recall of her last birth was the district nurse’s visit, a stressful ordeal for my mother that left her feeling more alone.Herrick, Robert. My mother used to tell me how Mrs Hayes from over the road helped with my birth. ![]() One of the most significant changes for my mother was having her last child in a hospital my other siblings and I were born at home. As the lives of rural, working-class men like my father changed (he went from being a farm labourer to a builder’s labourer), so did the lives of our mothers. Mr Ed and The Fugitive arrived, and so did the distance between neighbours that television brought. The meitheal, the stations mass, faded away. Then, how he rockedĪ way of life was ending. Their skin popping apart in licks of sweat as they slid The air around them simmered with animal odour To the marvel of his backside, cool flesh balloon-soft. Her hands trailed down the tapered camber of his waist My Parents’ First Night, 1955 is a poem where I imagine their first sexual encounter: Sex was a cause of anxiety, and from the discord between my parents, often over trivial things, I understood that sexual frustration was part of their unhappiness. I learned that sex was something a woman had to endure rather than enjoy. I remembered snatches of conversations where my mother and her sister discussed men. In that poem, I compare them to Bonnie and Clyde, born to live the half-life of delinquents. She sneaked into his room like a criminal, leaving me alone and feeling betrayed. I felt sorry for them, their young lives and bodies, and their ‘safe period’ game that I didn’t understand – some nights she slept with me, some nights with him. They married in 50s Ireland, a repressive and insular place where sex was sinful. They resemble gangsters from a black-and-white film, an image that contrasts their culture with mine, influenced by American TV shows. Their wedding photo is the first poem where my parents appear together the title is On The Run In Dreary Eden. The writing led me into the heart not just of my mother but also her era, her relationship with my father, with change and how she and my father were unprepared, or unwilling or unable to adapt to the tremendous social change that Ireland underwent in the 60s. Poems that began as celebrations of landscape led to poems that show me being uneasy in her landscape, and she alienated in mine. I saw my mother as an outsider in both Galway and Limerick, and my homeplace was not her place. Customs were changing, and forming bonds with new, scattered neighbours was harder. My mother left rural Galway and never felt at home in rural Limerick, where I grew up. I had to continue writing to learn more about our relationship. I learned that closeness did not define my bond with my mother – though a child loves until taught otherwise. It was hard to revisit those memories through the lens of art and uncover uncomfortable truths, but they enabled me to see my mother more fully and complexly. I realised that my mother missed her old life on a farm, and she regretted the loss of the traditions of that time – churning butter, slaughtering the pig – a harsh, beautiful, primal way of life. In poems about travelling from Co Limerick to her childhood home in Co Galway, a place embodied by my grandmother’s kitchen and back kitchen, I uncovered my first understanding of my mother.
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