Overview

Rachael Hegarty’s May Day 1974 is an act of remembrance and reclamation. It not only commemorates each innocent victim of those bombings but restores a sense of their unique individuality; a deeper understanding of the lives they were leading and the stolen lives they might have led; the dreams they possessed and the dreams they were denied the chance to ever see realised. It is richly humane, sobering and profoundly moving. Dermot Bolger What an extraordinary book this is. What a challenge, to give voices to the dead. And how triumphantly Rachael Hegarty succeeds, how utterly convincing these poems are in their delicacy, their humour, and the truth of their language; how well her words become these people, who now become the protagonists of their own lives. There are many lovely things here, in this book that is full of love. Ciaran Carson Here is a profound recuperation and remembrance, centred on the victims of one of the most shocking attacks on the Republic in recent history. The harrowing verbatim witness of the relatives is juxtaposed with Dr. Hegarty’s reconstructions of the interior lives of those murdered. Their hopes and fears, their work lives and family lives, their dreams for their children and their friends, are imagined in lucent and empathetic poetry. This powerful book adds impetus to the long struggle by the relatives, with the selfless and tireless dedication of Margaret Urwin, to simply find out what happened, and to get justice for their lost loved ones. Here the dead cry out for truth in poems that return to us their beauty, their dignity and their magnificent humanity. Paula Meehan

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9781912561629

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Rachael Hegarty was born seventh child of a seventh child in Dublin and reared on the Northside. She was educated by the Holy Faith Sisters in Finglas, the U. Mass. Bostonians in America, the M.Phillers at Trinity and by the Ph.D. magicians at Queens. She lived, studied and worked in Boston and Japan for ten years. She is widely published in national and international journals and broadcast on RTE Radio. Rachael was the winner of the Francis Ledwidge Prize and Over the Edge New Writer of the Year. She was also shortlisted for the Hennessey New Irish Writer and Ver Poetry Prizes and highly commended for the Forward Poetry Prizes. She is an educator for the Trinity Access Programme and CDETB but reckons she learns more from her students than she can ever teach. She now lives, back on the Northside, with her feminist husband and two beloved-bedlam boys.

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