Tenant

Tenant is a narrative sequence, following the fictional O'Sullivan family through the traumatic famine years, 1845 to 1849. The main character is Rena, whose personal journey through the period represents the shock, struggle, devastation and dubious resolution through death that marked the time. Her father, Peadar, is also central to the story and his inability to blossom in his life is another kind of hunger. From the first, these poems were an attempted retrospective incarnation, a transporting backwards of characters who are also recognisable in our time. It involves opening the ear to their voices and to the voices of the terrain, inner and outer.