Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe.
Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas.
In this debut book-length collection, fragility and strength are finely balanced, focused on the ruins of an island cottage built by her great-grandfather. Here, Cathy Galvin locates both mourning, humour and joy. The poems give a vivid, original voice to the tradition of keening, of honouring the loss of those we love.
'Here the west of Ireland comes alive, island life and sea-shore culture caught in language and rhythms that are natural to the themes, in both the colloquial and the formal, in the precision of the characterisations and the imagery. The personal level of the work is held close and carries the whole, forming a true history of the lives of people on the margins. This is a profound achievement.' – John F. Deane
'Years since I was so moved by a new collection. Cathy Galvin writes from close knowledge, in a variety of forms and voices, with a coherent drive and many branchings that never leave the heart of the matter. In the later part of the book her grief over her son’s death is deep and always palpable but is never – so to speak – let loose. Everything in this book wants saying. It’s urgent and, like all good poetry, it ramifies far beyond the poet’s own self.' – David Constantine
'The collection is thoughtful, provocative, and symphonic with an admirable blending of form. Cathy Galvin is a maker of storied memory.' – David Morley
'Ethnology is a book of wonders, poised on that moment when legends become myth and songs become the wind.' – Richard Skinner
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