A Covid poetry book with a unique touch

This week’s Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column

Michael Commane

I am forever saying that it is the small things in life that so often work out to be the great and important moments. So often we miss a remark, a sentence a gesture and we end up being so much the poorer for it.

Last week I was chatting to a nurse in the hospital where I work. Noeleen McDaid is from Donegal, she’s an amateur actor and plays the guitar. 

In a passing remark she referred to a book that her guitar group had just published. Immediately I became curious and gave her no opportunity but to tell me the story.

It’s a Covid baby. One of the singers in the Nure group posted a poem called Caged Birds by Maya Angelou on their WhatsApp site. 

Most of the band members are from Dublin’s Terenure, hence the name Nure. From the WhatsApp postings emerged the idea of Nure Poets Corner WhatsApp group. Every Saturday morning a member of the group posted a poem they liked along with an accompanying introduction.

Forty-one poems were posted on the site. The majority of the poets were Irish but there were also poets from Nigeria, England, the US, Mexico, Chile and Japan.

From that simple beginning a beautiful book of poetry and commentaries has been published.  The book is called NurePoets Corner - Poems 2020 - 2021.

It consists of 24 poems and each of the contributors has commented on their poem of choice. 

In the second half of the book members of the group express their own personal comments on the poem and what it means to them. It’s a book that you can easily dip in and out of. Besides the poems, there are so many opinions and views that gives this book a unique touch. 

My nurse friend Noeleen chose Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope’ is the Thing With Feathers. 

In her introduction to the poem she recalls how she loved Dickinson’s themes of death, immortality, faith and doubt when she was studying English for her Leaving Certificate. 

Justin Cunniffe in his comment on Noeleen’s poem alludes to the fact that hope is a quality that is especially needed right now in these times of Covid.

And like all good writing, he points out the Dickinson poem is as relevant today as it was when the American poet wrote it.  Dickinson, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886 lived a reclusive life after an unhappy love affair. This poem was first published in 1891.

Alice Shaughnessy writes that on reading the Dickinson poem she is now going to go off and read more of the American’s poetry. It’s Alice’s wish that when we get back to the new normal, the little bird in the poem ‘perched in all our souls will sing to the heavens’.

In his introduction to the book Peter Coghlan refers to an Irish Times statistic that the late Eavan Boland often quoted; ‘while only 10 per cent of Irish people read poetry, 45 per cent of us write poetry.’ 

He hints that the time might well come when the group will publish a book of their own personal poetry. A great idea and I’ll be looking forward to perusing it. 

In the meantime, this book is a gem and congratulations to all involved.