West Wind Blows 13oct2024

This program is sponsored by Bounce Back Recycling, offering affordable and sustainable furniture and mattress disposal. The program pays tribute to Yvonne Boland, a renowned poet, who challenged the lack of representation of women's issues in Irish poetry. Boland's poems, such as "Night Feed" and "The Pomegranate," capture the universal experiences of motherhood and the bittersweetness of watching children grow. Trinity College Dublin renamed its main library after Boland, the first building on campus named after a woman. These poems highlight the timeless themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. This program is kindly sponsored by Bounce Back Recycling. Say goodbye to your old furniture and mattress in an affordable, convenient and sustainable way. Call 091-760-877. Hello again and welcome. We are dedicating today's program to the memory of Yvonne Boland, who died on April 27, 2020, a wonderful lady and a great loss to the world of poetry. She was born in Dublin on September 24, 1944. Her father, Frederick Boland, was a diplomat who served as the first Irish ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United Nations. Her mother, Frances Kelly, usually known as Judy Boland, was an established artist. Because of her father's diplomatic career, Yvonne Boland spent a good deal of her childhood in London and New York, later returning to Ireland to attend secondary school in Killiney and at Trinity College Dublin. She was Professor of English at Stanford University, where she directed the creative writing program right up until her sudden death. She is survived by her husband, a writer, Kevin Casey, her two daughters and her grandchildren. We saw yesterday that the main library at Trinity College Dublin has been renamed after Yvonne Boland. This will be the first building on Trinity's campus to be named after a woman. And of course, as we know, Yvonne Boland was a former lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. Yvonne Boland is a groundbreaking poet. Groundbreaking in the sense that she was the first Irish poet to give a place in poetry to women's concerns. She said herself that as a young wife and mother, she couldn't find her own story reflected in Irish poetry. Irish male poets seemed to regard women's issues as not the stuff of poetry, not worthy of its place in poetry. Yvonne Boland changed all of that. For instance, her poem Night Feed is about a mother feeding her newborn infant. This moment is a beautiful short poem about a mother going out at twilight to collect her child for bedtime. The pomegranate, her favourite poem, by the way, is a marvellous poem about the feelings of a mother seeing her teenage daughter growing away from her to become her own person. It's about love and loss. Love is a poem about a young wife and mother. Yvonne Boland's poem, The Great Political Poem, also highlights women's issues. So we'll begin with the poem Night Feed. This is a domestic, first-person poem. But like many of Boland's poems, while the subject is domestic, it has a universal relevance. The poem tells of a moment in Boland's own life as a mother, and it strikes a chord with every mother. The poem is read by Marion Finucane, and it's from the CD Voices and Poetry of Ireland. Night Feed by Yvonne Boland This is dawn. Believe me, this is your season, little daughter. The moment daisies open, the hour-mercurial rainwater makes a mirror for sparrows. It's time we drowned our sorrows. I tiptoe in, I lift you up, wriggling in your rosy-zipped sleeper. Yes, this is the hour for the early bird and me, when finder is keeper. I crook the bottle, how you suckle. This is the best I can be, housewife, to this nursery, where you hold on, dear life. A silt of milk, the last suck, and now your eyes are open, breath-coloured and offended. Earth wakes, you go back to sleep. The feed is ended. Worms turn, stars go in. Even the moon is losing face, poplars stilt for dawn, and we begin the long fall from grace. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. I tuck you in. Let the wind blow, love. Hear the wind blow. Lean your head over, and hear the wind blow. The rocks are fading, way out on the blue. The wind will carry us till we're you. Rivers are varying, and silver the sea. And soon there'll be silver for my love and me. Hear the wind blow, love. Hear the wind blow. Lean your head over, and hear the wind blow. Hear the wind blow, love. Hear the wind blow. Lean your head over, and hear the wind blow. And that was the Connemara Cradle Song with Eamonn Lacey and Jeannie Nee. And that, of course, was taken from the Connemara Community Radio CD, Come By The Hills. This moment is a domestic incident, but it's also a universal incident. This poem is set in a neighbourhood at dusk. It could be any neighbourhood, anywhere. The central theme in the poem is mother love. It's the simple yet wonderful timeless story of motherhood and love and a child's need for a feeling of security in its mother's arms. The poem is set at dusk, a time of change. Night is coming. Things are getting ready to happen out of sight, but not yet. The poet wants to capture and hold on to a mother-child moment of love and innocence. Night will come. Stars will rise. Moths will flutter in the dark. But Yvanne Boland's Not Yet is her wish to hold on to this moment. The title This Moment wants us to focus on one simple story that's as old as the world. Of course the moment cannot be frozen. Everything changes. Stars rise as night falls. Moths flutter in the dark. Apples sweeten in the dark. The apples sweetening in the dark remind us of the apple of temptation and the inevitable loss of innocence. And now Linda O'Malley will read the poem. This Moment, a poem by Yvanne Boland A neighbourhood at dusk Things are getting ready to happen out of sight Stars and moths and rinds slanting around fruit But not yet. One tree is black. One window is yellow as butter. A woman leans down to catch a child who has run into her arms. This moment. Stars rise. Moths flutter. Apples sweeten in the dark. From this moment. Life has begun. From this moment. You are the one. Right beside you is where I belong. From this moment on. From this moment. I have been there. I live only. For your happiness. And for your love. I'd give my life for it. From this moment on. I give my hand to you with all my heart. I can't wait to live my life with you. I can't wait to die. You and I will never be apart. My dreams came true. Because of you. From this moment. As long as I live. I will love you. I promise you this. There is nothing. I wouldn't give. From this moment on. You're the reason I believe in love. And you're the answer to my prayers from above. All we need is just you around. My dreams came true. Because of you. From this moment. As long as I live. I will love you. I promise you this. There is nothing. I wouldn't give. From this moment on. I will love you. As long as I live. From this moment on. And that was From This Moment On by Shania Twain. And next, The Pomegranate. And it's about a mother's love for her daughter. And her reluctance to let her daughter grow up and live her own life. She draws a comparison between their own situation and that of Ceres and Persephone from Greek mythology. Ceres was goddess of crops and growth. And her daughter Persephone was stolen by Pluto and taken to the underworld. Ceres was heartbroken. And she searched high up and low down for her daughter. And eventually she found her in the underworld. But Persephone had eaten six seeds of the pomegranate. And once she had eaten of the pomegranate, she could no longer be a child. You can interpret the eating of the pomegranate in many ways. It symbolises the loss of innocence. Ceres made a deal with Pluto that she could have her daughter back for six months every year. And because Ceres loved her daughter so much, she'd make any bargain to keep her. Boland's own daughter will metaphorically eat the pomegranate, meaning she will grow up, become a woman, and in a way be lost to her mother. Each winter Persephone returned to the underworld. And a metaphorical winter will also come for Boland when she must love and let go. And the poem goes, It is winter, and the stars are hidden. I climb the stairs and stand where I can see my child asleep. Beside her teen magazines. Her can of coke. Her plate of uncut fruit. The pomegranate. How did I forget it? And now we listen to Kathleen McDonnell reading the poem. The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell, and found and rescued there. Love and blackmail are the gist of it. Ceres and Persephone, the names. And the best thing about the legend is I can enter it anywhere. And have. As a child in exile, in a city of fogs and strange continents, I read it first, and at first I was an exiled child in the cracking dusk of the underworld, the stars lighted. Later I walked out in a summer twilight, searching for my daughter at bedtime. When she came running, I was ready to make any bargain to keep her. I carried her back past white beams and wasps and honey-scented buglias. But I was Ceres then, and I knew winter was in store for every leaf on every tree on that road, and I knew winter was inescapable for each one we passed, and for me. It is winter and the stars are hidden. I climb the stairs and stand where I can see my child asleep, beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story, and all our heartbroken searching, but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate. She put out her hand and pulled down the French sound for apple, and the noise of stone and the proof that even in the place of death, at the heart of legend, in the midst of rocks full of unshed tears, ready to be diamonds by the time the story was told, a child can be hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance. The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured. The suburb has cars and cable television. The veiled stars are above ground. It is another world. But what else can a mother give her daughter with such beautiful rifts in time? If I defer the grief, I will diminish the gift. The legend will be hers as well as mine. She will enter it, as I have. She will wake up. She will hold the papery-flushed skin in her hand and to her lips. I will say nothing. The End Are the special years Time never can erase From play toys To college boys From little girls To wives And in between Are the special years You remember All of your life The special years are filled With sweet promises and pain But love will never taste Quite so wonderful again So slow up Don't rush to grow up You will be a woman before long So stay a while In the special years Their magic Will soon be gone Just stay a while In the special years Their magic Will soon be gone In this poem, Yvanne Boland recalls a time of intense magical love between herself and her husband in their early married life. Their love was wonderful. She is revisiting Iowa after several years and looking back, she recalls that love was magical and mythical. The Iowa River was the river Styx of mythology and her husband, crossing the bridge is the mythical hero, Aeneas crossing the Styx on his way to the underworld. Their love had the feather and muscle of wings. It was their winged horse, Pegasus. It was romantic and spiritual but it was also strong and mutually supportive. It was the most powerful force in their lives. Their love needed to be powerful because they had to cope with the trauma of their young child being struck down with meningitis. The anxiety over their child, obviously made their life and love even more intense. But time changes everything including the deepest felt and most intensely experienced love. The past is past. That intense, mythical love which they once shared, belongs to the past. It was years ago and that past can never be recreated. They are still together. They are still in love. I am your wife. We love each other still. But it is not the intense love they shared in Iowa, years ago in their early married life when love was their brother of fire and air and had the feather and muscle of wings. Their love has changed. It has become ordinary, routine, day-to-day more muscle than feather. We love each other still across our day-to-day and ordinary distances. We speak plainly. We hear each other clearly. The poet longs to recreate the past and yet I want to return to you on the bridge of the Iowa River as you were with snow on the shoulders of your coat and a car passing with its headlights on. She wants to share the memory of the past with her husband. It cannot be done. Language is not capable of conveying the intensity of what she remembers. She considers asking the ethic question Will we ever live so intensely again? Will they ever experience love as it was, again? Love that lifted them up into a heavenly state. She doesn't ask the question. She knows the answer is no. They will never live so intensely again. The past is past and cannot be recreated. In this poem, Yvanne Boland makes great use of mythology. She alludes to the story of the hero Aeneas going down to the underworld and meeting the ghosts of her companions who had shared great adventures with them in the past. They want to talk to him about the great times they had shared. Their mouths opened and their voices failed and there is no knowing what they would have asked about a life they had shared and lost. Their voices were too feeble to carry because they were ghosts and Aeneas will never know what they feel. Yvanne Boland's voice fails. Language is unable to express her memory of the past and the intensity of her remembered feeling. Her husband will never really know how she feels. In mythology, Orpheus tried to recover his wife from the underworld and recreate the past. He failed. He had to walk away and leave his wife Eurydice behind him in the underworld. Likewise, Yvanne Boland fails to recreate the past. She cannot share the past with her husband. Like Orpheus, her husband walks away and like Eurydice, she cannot follow. And now, Kathleen Macdonald will read Love by Yvanne Boland. Love by Yvanne Boland Dark falls on this midwestern town where we once lived when myths collided. Dusk has hidden the bridge in the river which flies and deepens to become the water the hero crossed on his way to hell. Not far from here is our old apartment. We had a kitchen and an Amish table. We had a view. And we discovered there love had the feather and muscle of wings and had come to live with us, a brother of fire and air. We had two infant children, one of whom was touched by death in this town and spared. And when the hero was hailed by his comrades in hell, their mouths opened and their voices failed and there's no knowing what they would have asked about a life they had shared and lost. I am your wife. It was years ago. Our child was healed. We love each other still. Across our day-to-day and ordinary distances we speak plainly. We hear each other clearly. And yet I want to return to you on the bridge of the Iowa River as you were, with snow on the shoulders of your coat and a car passing with its headlights on. I see you as a hero in a text, the image blazing and the edges gilded. And I long to cry out the epic question, my dear companion, will we ever live so intensely again? Will love come to us again and be so formidable at rest? It offered us ascension even to look at him. But the words are shadows and you cannot hear me. You walk away and I cannot follow. There's a boy, a little boy shooting arrows in the blue and he's aiming them at someone but the question is that who? Is it me or is it you? It's hard to tell until you're hit but you'll know it when they hit you because they hurt a little bit. Here they come pouring out of the blue. Little arrows from the air for you. You're falling in love again, falling in love again. Little arrows in your clothing, little arrows in your hair. When you're in love you'll find those little arrows everywhere. Little arrows that will hit you once and hit you once again. Little arrows that hit everybody every now and then. All the pain. Some folks are run and others hide but there ain't nothing they can do. And some folks put on armor but the arrows go straight through. So you see there's no escape so why not face it and admit that you love those little arrows when they hurt a little bit. Here they come pouring out of the blue. Little arrows for me and for you. You're falling in love again, falling in love again. Little arrows in your clothing, little arrows in your hair. When you're in love you'll find those little arrows everywhere. Little arrows that will hit you once and hit you once again. Little arrows that hit everybody every now and then. Here they come pouring out of the blue. Little arrows for me and for you. You're falling in love again, falling in love again. Little arrows in your clothing, little arrows in your hair. When you're in love you'll find those little arrows everywhere. Little arrows that will hit you once and hit you once again. Little arrows that hit everybody every now and then. Little arrows in your clothing, little arrows in your hair. When you're in love you'll find those little arrows everywhere. And that was Leapy Lee with Little Arrows, a next child of our time. This poem is both a lament and a prayer. It's a lament for a baby killed in a bomb in central Dublin in 1974 and it's a prayer that the baby's death will not have been in vain. Miss Anne Boland hopes that we learn from the child's death. She wants us to learn a new language, a new way of communicating, other than by violence. In this poem, the mindless, senseless killing of the baby is highlighted by irony. You have taught me, a child teaching an adult, it should be the other way around. The poet's reason for writing the poem is the unreasoned end of the child's life. It was ended by a mindless, irrational violence which defies reason. The child's death is unreasoned in another sense. In the normal sense of things, children grow into adulthood and on to old age and then die. Dying in babyhood, especially by violence, is against the reasonable order of things. Lullabies are written for and sung to babies. Lullabies soothe crying babies. A lullaby is pointless for the baby in this poem. She has made her final cry. It's too late for a lullaby. So if Anne Boland is writing not a lullaby but a different sort of song and she's moved to write this poem precisely because the child has been murdered, is dead and cannot hear, she says that her song takes its motive from the fact you cannot listen and it takes its rhythm from the discord of your murder. Her poem has order and rhythm but the killing of a baby defies all reason. It's an act of awful disorder. In the normal order of things, the child will grow into adulthood but the rhythm or flow of this child's life has been destroyed. Yvanne Boland claims that collectively we carry the blame for the child's death. Our times have robbed your cradle. We should have provided an environment of love, happiness and safety for that child to grow up in. We should have made a better world. We didn't. Instead we had idle talk which led to violence and bombs and so we must share collective guilt. And the poem goes We who should have known how to instruct with rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep, names for the animals you took to bed, tales to distract, legends to protect, later an idiom for you to keep, and living must learn from you dead. This beautifully describes the environment of love, security and happiness which we should have provided for the child. A world of nursery rhymes, pets, fairy tales for the imagination and legends that would protect in the sense that they would show a world of decent values for the good win. Society should, according to Boland, equip the child in later life with an idiom to keep. We should have taught her a proper way of communicating, a proper language, a language very different from the language of violence and bombs. We have failed and now Boland prays that we'll be able to learn from the child's murder. She hopes that the child's destruction, its broken limbs, will inspire us to rebuild our broken image. In other words, that we'll find a new set of values, a new way of communicating, a new language, instead of the idle talk which has robbed a cradle. The last line of the poem is an expression of hope for a better world. Sleep in a world, your final sleep has woken. And now we listen to Keane Hogan reading Child of Our Times by Eavan Boland. I'd like to read a poem for you now by Eavan Boland, entitled Child of Our Time. The poem centred on the conceit of a lullaby and it was Boland's reaction to the troubles in Northern Ireland in which he tried to find a new language or a new rhetoric to describe our inability to put our feelings concerning violence and loss into words. Yesterday I knew no lullaby, but you have taught me overnight to order this song, which takes from your final cry its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason, its rhythm from the discord of your murder, its motive from the fact you cannot listen. We who should have known how to instruct with rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep, names for the animals you took to bed, tales to distract, legends to protect, later an idiom for you to keep, and living, learn, must learn from you dead. To make our broken images rebuild themselves around your limbs. Your broken image, fine for your sake whose life our idle talk has cost a new language. Child of our time, our times have robbed your cradle. Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken. Let there be peace for today and forever. May troubles cease in this fair land we love. With hope and faith days of fear will be ended. When God hears our nation pray, let there be peace. Feast your tender fields of grain, watch the sky or sea. Warm in sunshine, warm in rain, all afraid and free. Peace in our time and for our children's children. God of our fathers, hear us, let there be peace. Let there be peace for today and forever. May troubles cease in this fair land we love. With hope and faith days of fear will be ended. When God hears our nation pray, let there be peace. Feast your tender fields of grain, watch the sky or sea. Warm in sunshine, warm in rain, all afraid and free. Peace in our time and for our children's children. God of our fathers, hear us, let there be peace. God of our fathers, hear us, let there be peace. And that was Daniel O'Donnell with Let There Be Peace. This Eavan Boland poem you are about to hear is called Quarantine and it's among the ten poems shortlisted for Ireland's favourite poem. Of the last hundred years, Mary Ruddy will read Quarantine by Eavan Boland. Quarantine by Eavan Boland In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking, they were both walking, north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and west and north until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived. In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold, of hunger, of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her. Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexact praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. There is only time for this merciless inventory. Their deaths together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered, how they lived and what there is between a man and a woman and in which darkness it can best be proved. Oh father dear, I oft times hear you talk of Erin's Isle. Her lofty scenes and valleys green, her mountains rude and wild. They say it is a pretty place where in a prince might dwell. Oh why did you abandon it? Reason to me tell. Oh son, I loved my native land with energy and pride. Till the blight came over all my crops, my sheep and cattle died. The rent and taxes were so high I could not them redeem. And that's the cruel reason why I let those keep me. Oh it's well I do remember that bleak December day. The landlord and the sheriff came to drive us all away. They set my roof on fire with their demon yellow flame. And that's another reason why I let those keep me. Your mother too, God rest her soul, fell on the snowy ground. She fainted in her anguish seeing the desolation round. She never rose but passed away from life to mortal dream. She found a quiet grave, my boy, in dear old Skibbereen. And you were only two years old and feeble was your frame. I could not leave you with your friends, you bore your father's name. I wrapped you in my coat and more in the dead of night unseen. I heaved a sigh and said goodbye to dear old Skibbereen. And that was Sinead O'Connor with the Chieftains and Skibbereen. And the final poem today is The Fannin Road. This is a poem about powerlessness, about exclusion, about being voiceless. There are two stories told in the poem. The public story of the Irish Fannin victims and the private modern day story of a woman who has been given a diagnosis of infertility by a medical consultant. By setting the two stories together, Yvanne Boland highlights both tragedies. But she has especially used the public, historic, familiar story of the Fannin victims to illustrate and highlight aspects of a woman's life which have never been regarded as the stuff of poetry. Of course we know that the Fannin Roads were relief works set up to provide work for the starving Irish during the Fannin. Rather than give out badly needed handouts, the starving men were put to work building what we now call Fannin Roads. Roads that served no purpose, roads going from nowhere to nowhere. In a stroke of sheer genius, Boland uses the story of the Fannin workers to highlight the problem of infertility. The poem is a story about what the powerful do to the powerless. And as we compare both stories, we can look at parallels. The Fannin Road workers have no voice and the woman has no voice. The Fannin Road workers are denied their natural role. The woman is denied her natural role. The Fannin Road workers are put doing work that is pointless and unfulfilling. The woman is told to take up a hobby, grow your garden, keep house, something that given her situation and her feelings would seem pointless and unfulfilling. If the woman's story were told on its own, it wouldn't make the powerful impact that it does when placed side by side with the story of the Fannin Road workers. And now we listen to Dennis Craven reading The Fannin Road by Eavan Boland. The Fannin Road Idle as trout, Colonel Jones. These Irish. Give them no coins at all. Their bones need toil, their characters no less. Trevelyan sea that blooded the deal table. The relief committee deliberated. Might it be safe, Colonel, to give them roads? Roads. Roads to force from nowhere. Going nowhere, of course. One out of every ten, and then another third of these again. Women. In a case like yours. Sick, directionless, they worked. Fark, stick, were iron years away. After all, could they not blood their knuckles on rock, April hailstones for water, and for food? Why for that, cunning as housewives, each eyed as if at a corner butchers the other's buttock. Anything may have caused it, spores, a childhood accident. One sees day after day these mysteries. Dusk. They will work tomorrow without him. They know it and walk clear. He has become a toy-fied pariah. He is blood-tainted, although he shares it with some there. No more than snow attends its own flakes where they settle and melt. Will they pray by his death-rattle? You never will, never you know. But take it well, woman. Grow your garden. Keep house. Goodbye. It has gone better than we expected, Lord Trevelyan. Sedition, idleness cured in one. From parish to parish, field to field, the wretches work till they are quite worn, then fester by their work. We march the corn to the ships in peace. This Tuesday I saw bones out of my carriage window. Your servant, Jones. Baron, never to know the load of his child in you. What is your body now, if not a famine road? By a lonely prison wall I heard a young girl calling. Michael, they have taken you away. For you stole Trevelyan's corn. Though the young might see the morn. Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay. Low lies a field of athenry Where once was the small free bird's flight. Our love was on the wing With dreams and songs to sing. So lonely round the fields of athenry. By a lonely prison wall I heard a young man calling. Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free. Against the famine and the crown I rebelled, they caught me down. Now you must raise our child with dignity. Low lies a field of athenry Where once was the small free bird's flight. Our love was on the wing With dreams and songs to sing. So lonely round the fields of athenry. So lonely round the fields of athenry. So lonely round the fields of athenry. So lonely round the fields of athenry. By a lonely harbor wall She watched the last star falling As the prison ship sailed out against the sky. For she lived in hope and pray For her love in Bodley Bay. So lonely round the fields of athenry. Low lies a field of athenry Where once she watched the small free bird's flight. Our love was on the wing With dreams and songs to sing. So lonely round the fields of athenry. And that was Paddy Riley with the Fields of Athenry. Just to remind Leaving Cert students higher level that a complete programme on the poetry of Yvanne Boland is on the website www.cundamara.fm educationalprogrammes. Yvanne Boland hasn't appeared on the Leaving Cert higher level paper since 2018 so who knows, she might appear in June 2025. Well we've come to the end of the programme for this week. Thanks to you at home for listening, thanks to Bridie who produced the programme and looking forward to your company again next week. This programme was kindly sponsored by Bounce Back Recycling. Say goodbye to your old furniture and mattress in an affordable, convenient and sustainable way. Call 091 760 877 This programme is kindly sponsored by Bounce Back Recycling. Say goodbye to your old furniture and mattress in an affordable, convenient and sustainable way. Call 091 760 877