Athlone writer publishes series of Connaught Street poems
As part of the John Broderick Emerging Writer Bursary Award received in 2024, poet Jackie Gorman has written a sequence of poems about Connaught Street in Athlone.
The poems will be available as a free chapbook as part of Heritage Week activities in Athlone. Produced by the Factory, Ireland’s leading environmentally friendly printer, the publication is supported by Creative Ireland and Westmeath Heritage Office. The support of Connaught Street and Environs Community Group for this work is also gratefully appreciated.
The chapbook will be available throughout Heritage Week which runs from August 15 to August 23 from Athlone Library and also at a poetry reading in the Dean Crowe Theatre on August 15 and at the Connaught Street Traditional Market and Craft Demonstrations Event on August 23.
The poems span from before the street existed to the present day, taking in everything from fossils to Jacobite soldiers, revolutionaries and changing landscapes along the way.
As well as being available at these events and locations, a number of copies of this publication have already been provided to the Heartlands Care Centre in Athlone in grateful appreciation to the staff who looked after Jackie’s mother Gladys in her final days earlier this year. Gladys was proud to be from the Connaught side of Athlone and had great memories of and affection for Connaught Street.
Commenting on the poems, Jackie Gorman said: “Researching Connaught Street gave me the impetus to write a short sequence of poems which I hope shows what a special place it is. The poems span the area from before the street existed to the present day.
"What really fascinates me are the people and the small details that make a life. I don’t have the rigorous eye of a detective but rather the eye of a magpie which is attracted to the sparkling details which emerge from research. I’ve discovered fallen soldiers from World War 1, revolutionaries, poitín makers, writers, tailors and a profound love of place.”
One poem from this sequence can already be seen on Connaught Street on a mural about the Cumann na mBan Athlone Branch Secretary Eva Fitzgerald who played a prominent role in the War of Independence in Athlone. There are a wide range of Heritage Week activities happening all across Westmeath and more details can be found on www.heritageweek.ie
Jackie Gorman's debut collection The Wounded Stork, published by the Onslaught Press, UK in 2019, was described by Dr Martin Dyar in Poetry Ireland Review as ‘an engrossing and ecologically attuned debut.’ She has received a number of awards for her work and is widely published in Ireland and the UK and is currently working on a second collection.