Poet Joan McBreen
Unbridled Joy,
by Joan McBreen
(Salmon Poetry, €12.99)
Joan McBreen’s first book of poems, The Wind Beyond The Wall, which was awarded the prestigious Nicholas Roerich poetry prize in the US, was published there and in Ireland in 1990 by the distinguished Story Line Press.
Commentators noted that her poetry evokes a contemporary Ireland struggling to maintain its unique identity while asserting its rightful place in the modern world and that Joan, who began writing in midlife, was taking the Irish literary world by storm thereby joining the first rank of contemporary women’s powerful and important voices.
Later on, in 2009, the poet Eamon Grennan, in endorsing Heather Island, her fourth collection, wrote that through their simple plainspoken respect for the ordinary Joan’s quietly lyrical poems compose a settlement for the heart, even a site for soul-pondering. In this, she reminds me of Patrick Kavanagh who could play a true note on a dead slack string.
Unbridled Joy, her new book, a site for soul-pondering, is a song of experience and a book of wisdom, an ode to joy full of love and hope hard won from personal experience of great pain. Through this dark night of the soul she has arrived at a place where chords of love insist that joy will win.
Though Joan has gone through the dark night where she cries out that nothing again will be all right, she shares an almost mystical experience where the light shines on and on.
From another tradition, the Buddhist tradition, one could say that she has achieved a kind of satori where she can listen without answers, where she is filled with peace.
As I have already said, Unbridled Joy is both a song of experience and a book of wisdom transporting the reader into the heart of darkness which will eventually be redeemed by the grace of a deep and pure faith. It is a powerful statement, a lón anama, food for the soul, a book written by a poet at the height of her powers. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Salmon Poetry can be reached at info@salmonpoetry.com