Seamus Scanlon

THE NEW IRELAND

In the wet grass of the church grotto
I bled away my baby
For the New Ireland
That loves sin.
I cried and the rain hid me.
I looked down
Red on green—Mayo colors.
Callow Lake I will never see again
And the Moy that carried beautiful dead boys out to sea.


Clare Toohey reads "The New Ireland":



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Seamus confesses: "'The New Ireland' was inspired by the story of a Irish teenager who gave birth alone in a grotto behind a church, in the shadow of a Virgin Mary statue. Both she and the baby died. I also linked the birth/death event to the high suicide rate among teenage boys in Ireland. I used water as motif (rain, Callow Lake, the River Moy) because it is the major component of Irish weather and landscape, and the breaking waters should signify renewal and birth."

SEAMUS SCANLON is a writer from Galway, Ireland home of Lord Haw Haw, Nora Barnacle, Druid Theatre, Johnny Rotten's grandparents and rain. His first collection, As Close As You'll Ever Be, got a starred review from Library Journal and a cult following in Woodlawn.