Taking poetry as an act of witness and restorative memory, this essay traces the development of poems relating to Ireland's Great Hunger from the mid- nineteenth century to the present day.
Lives and Miracles maps a territory of place, memory, character and event; part testament, part act of imagination. Grounded in a vernacular idiom, and using many narrative, dramatic lyric, rhyme and ballad metre, these poems capture voices and stories of Irish life with humour and compassion. The Life and Miracles of Christy McGaddy received the Ted McNulty poetry award 2002. The collection contains thirty five drawings by Charles Cullen which derive from the poems and from the landscapes of County Leitrim in which the poems are set.