I 'discovered' Doireann Ní Ghríofa last year during the first months of lockdown when I was reading incessantly. Her book 'A Ghost in the Throat' still haunts me, one of the most compelling voices I've ever heard wandering through the lives of women whose souls are intertwined, centuries apart. So I was delighted to find her video performance of her poem 'The Brightening'.
I call it a performance rather than a reading, because like her book it's quite hard to tell where the line is between narrator and narrative. We move seamlessly back and forth from interior to exterior, from past to present. Given the title, 'The Brightening' and the way her west of Ireland accent draws out those long O sounds, I was reminded of these lines by Yeats:
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
(from Among School Children by W.B.Yeats)
In this performance by Ní Ghríofa the dancer and the dance are truly one. I can't say that I understand it all (could you ever say that about a poem?) but the conjunction with Yeats doesn't seem accidental: the image of the grand old house going up in flames feels connected to last days of the old Irish ascendancy of Yeats and Lady Gregory, and just this moment I noticed that the video was filmed in Coole Park.
The poem is a response to 'The Planter's Daughter' by Austin Clarke, but whereas the eponymous daughter in that poem is passive and an apologist for her family of planters in the big house, this narrator is strong and subversive and burns the house down.
There are so many extraordinary lines and images in the poem, but I'll highlight these:
Ghosts, those flames, racing up the stairs,
sending smoke through slates,
a vast constellation of sparks
to star the dark.
But listen to her say them for the full effect. The complete text of the poem is available here on the Irish Times website, though the version she performs has evolved a little since that publication.
Wow.
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