Majella Kelly has found a subject to suit her voice – and what a voice it is, charged with images of Ireland that transport you there for better or worse, in sickness and in health, and in deepest trouble. The subject that dominates this not-to-be-missed debut is the discovery of an infant mass grave in Tuam, County Galway, the existence of which was only officially acknowledged in 2017. The wretched tale is that from 1925-1961, “fallen women” were sent to the inappropriately named Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, run by nuns. Exactly how so many babies failed to survive is not clear but injustice, cruelty and grief surge through the poems. At the same time and strangely, even at their darkest, there is at times a fairytale quality to this writing – magic in its margins.
The title suggests a readiness for a good gossip but while Kelly is captivatingly conversational, she is preoccupied by what it means for women to be silenced. Voice is about one of the unmarried mothers gagged by shame – and Kelly’s sureness of touch is evident in the accurate rurality of “cut nettles in empty cups”, as anyone who has uprooted a nettle and witnessed its speedy wilt can confirm. The final lines of the poem are frightening in their crematorial helplessness: “But when I opened my mouth to cry out,/I spoke only in a thin grey wisp of smoke.” The plain simplicity of the nouns is exactly right (nettles, fireplace, smoke) – she does not get in the way of her subject. Elsewhere, though, there are poems that possibly over-tell the scandalous story. Clean begins: “Dead is the happiest we ever were…” The line’s authoritative flow cannot override the bitter falseness of the attestation – death being no happiness at all. And there are times when Kelly is over-reliant on lists of nouns such as strings of beads, poetic rosaries – although at their best (especially in I Am From) these have their uses.
