I wrote these after a trip to Ireland in the summer of
1997. After working for some 25 years of my life, I
had decided at that time to stop and devote all my
time to writing full time -- sort of a "now or never"
attack on trying to get published. First, however, I
treated myself to this trip. I was going first to
Dublin for a few days, then out to the Aran Islands
for a week, and then finally to Dingle where I would
hook up with one of my brothers and his wife who were
there for a month.
The final job I had quit was an administrative one at
an academic institution here in the Boston area. Much
of that job involved report writing and meeting
summaries and accreditation reports -- endless
re-packaging of many of the same issues and concerns
for various audiences. When I visited Trinity College
to see The Book of Kells and toured the museum devoted
to manuscript illumination, I began quite taken by the
task of the monks to copy out those ancient texts.
Once home, I began reading about those monks and their
work and blended all that reading into the one poem,
"In the Margins." I have to say, seeing the picture
described in the final lines of my poem in one of the
books I read felt like a final salute to the work I
would no longer have to do, for, of course, that
relief was slowly beginning to dawn on me as I
wandered around the streets and museums of Dublin.

The poem "Refuge" comes from a number of long-mulled
over images. All my life I have been a knitter and
after my first trip to Ireland as a teenager (when it
was too late to visit there), I learned about the
tradition associated with the women of the Aran
Islands: that each has her own pattern and stitches
so that the garments she knitted for her men could be
clearly identified should the dreaded drowning occur
and the faceless body of the long missing at sea one
day be washed back on shore. From the moment I heard
that story, I had identified with those women and I
wanted to visit there. After my husband died, those
islands became a place that felt like refuge to me.
Here would be women who would understand my sorrow.
Or at least there would be ghosts of women who would
understand. When I told a friend of mine here what a
guidebook said about the islands (inhospitable land,
inhospitable people), he said to me, "Now, Moira, wait
a minute. Why exactly are you going there?" My poem
is an answer to his question.

After being on Inishmor, the largest of the Aran
Islands, I wanted to read more about the history and
landscape. One of the books I turned to was Synge's,
which is where the opening quote to "Hunger" comes
from. Having sat for hours on the cliffs he
described, I became obsessed with the notion of
hunger. For some time that idea was in the final
lines of the poem. It was only after putting the poem
away for a good year or so and looking at it again
that I realized those lines could go and I could
simply use "Hunger" as the title.

Those are the triggers behind these poems, how I came
to write them.

Moira Linehan