“…in terms of my own inspirations? Aye, they veer through absurdism, the avant-garde, Irish writing, European writing, and, lord, essentially all writing that places value on art above all else.” So ends the introduction to Oisín Breen’s Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín, encapsulating this delightful collection which melds Celtic mythology with a sense of uniquely modern angst. Lilies is Breen’s second book of poetry, following on from Flowers, All Sorts in Blossom, Figs, Berries and Fruits Forgotten (Hybrid/Dreich Press, 2020). This new collection, published by Beir Bua Press, is the work of a poet with a keen ear for rhyme and rhythm, comfortable with both long and short-form poetry, with life, death, mythology and the natural world forming a compelling backdrop for Breen’s verse.
The collection begins with ‘Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín’. In this ambitious poem, the lynchpin of the collection, Breen charts the life and death of a mother figure in a series of broken temporal instances, beginning where ‘All this ends with the hocking of soft skin in loose folds.’ Breen expertly draws on figures from Irish mythology, from ‘Baile and Ailinn, in grief’s pallor’ to ‘the thorn-struck blindness of Midir’ and of course his lover, the titular Étaín, transformed into a fly by Midir’s jealous wife. Those who would be put off the collection due to a lack of knowledge of mythology should bear heed to Breen’s repeated refrain throughout the poem:
How I long for the pure milk of the word
How I long then for the fine yew of the wood
As this sprawling poem unfolds itself to the reader, Breen takes on a far more familiar and modern sensibility, in which a pair of lovers become ‘lust-drunk metronomes’ whose expression of desire is ‘the unthreading of a well-worn coat’ – where eyes ‘do not unsheathe stars’ but his speaker admires ‘sclera held tight in a pink and muddy pair of lids’ and ‘everything vanishes in the desperate cerise of pressed lips… and rolling tongues.’ He emphasises both the local, from the ‘marsh tits that scavenge for scraps at the top of Leith walk’ and the universal, noting:
But one marker is harder to traverse than the rest, because
When your mother dies the tether snaps, and you know
Something is gone that will never return
With the death of the mother figure whose ‘chest burst with long twining branches, full in a livery/Of simple greens’, Breen draws to a triumphant climax, showing his readers the ‘pure milk of the word’ – evoked through these lines which cut to our hearts irrespective of background, history or familiarity with the Irish mythic tradition.
Breen’s second long-form poem, ‘The Love Song of Anna Rua’ treads a similar furrow of mythology and Irish lyricism, with its repeated refrains of ‘Ha-ra-hao’ ‘Tse-Tse’ betraying the ‘musicality’ at the heart of Breen’s verse. Once more, two central figures act out their love ‘Under this living memory of melody’ where tongues ‘chase timelessness/On the inside of your thighs.’
Following this are four short-form poems, which allow Breen to delve into themes of death, nature and mythology with greater precision. ‘Six Months Bought with Dirt: The Bothy Crop of Arranmore’ explores Donegal migrant labour and Scottish potato farming, through ‘whole families, who moved each year.’ Breen’s is a punishing and harsh setting which requires:
Six month toil for a kiss
For a child’s hand held,
Six months bought with dirt
The vein of tribulation and harshness within Breen’s work is perhaps laid most bare in ‘At Swim, Two Pair’, where the ‘damp rustling’ of a pair of swimming ducks represents ‘but a bleary epilogue’:
Of talons hooking flesh, of hawk, owl and gull
Of otter, mink, and stoat, each eager to strike
These lines conjure a bleak world where death is inevitable for the helpless and weak. And yet, Breen closes his collection with the work ‘Even Small Birds Can Render Planets Unto Ash’ – where a pair of puffins:
…left me gasping at their impetuousness
And, vivifying life, as they paused, then ducked
Beneath the waves, only to rise unto an apex of white foam.
Together, these two poems neatly evoke the poetic world Breen has forged – multifaceted, emotive and forever pulling between life and death, hope and fear.
In ‘A Chiaroscuro of Hunger,’ Breen writes of a holiday in Rome, where his figures:
…left then, to walk among the gardens of Barberini Palace
And catalogue, together, an alternative history of marble
Statues, which came alive at night and revelled, wine-drunk
Recreating the memories we all must share in want
And it is this ‘alternative history’ in which Breen deals throughout this collection. He imbues the mundanity of everyday life with mysticism and grandeur with these joyous poems firmly rooted in both the aged bark of the yew, and the pure milk of the word.
*
Daunish Negargar is a creative editor at New Critique.
Oisín Breen’s Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems (Beir Bua Press, 2023) is available here.
New Critique 