The Wind Beyond the Wall

by Joan McBreen

Overview

The forty poems in this first book by an Irish writer explore a variety of traditional and contemporary themes that combine to create the modern Irish consciousness. Beginning with poems that look back forty years or more on a childhood spent in the fabled country of Sligo, the book moves effortlessly to present-day issues of raising a family and making sense of the political turmoil unique to the country. Throughout the collection, McBreen also grapples with the contemporary Irish woman’s fight to assert her independence, asserting her own generous autonomy in the process. McBreen’s readers will quickly recognize the foundations of one of the world’s great oral traditions behind these evocative lyrics, and they will come away knowing much more about everyday Irish life than they did before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586540852
Publisher:	Story Line Press
Publication date:	12/08/2020
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Joan McBreen's poetry collections are: Map and Atlas (Salmon Poetry, 2017),
Heather Island (Salmon Poetry, 2009, reprinted 2013), Winter in the Eye - New
and Selected Poems(Salmon Poetry, 2003), A Walled Garden in Moylough
(Story Line Press and Salmon Poetry, 1995) and The Wind Beyond the Wall
(Story Line Press, 1990). Joan McBreen was awarded an MA from
UniversityCollege, Dublin in 1997.
Joan McBreen is from Sligo and now divides her time between Tuam and
Renvyle, Connemara, Co. Galway. She has published five collections of
poetry, the most recent being Map and Atlas. Her two anthologies are The
White Page / An Bhileog Bhán - Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets (Salmon
Poetry, 2001) and The Watchful Heart - A New Generation of Irish Poets Poems
and Essays (Salmon Poetry, 2009).
In 2014 she produced a CD The Mountain Ash in Connemara - Selected
Poems by Joan McBreen with original music and traditional airs composed
by Glen Austin and performed by the RTÉ Contempo String Quartet. In
2015 she brought out a broadside The Mountain Ash, a collaboration
between the poet, visual graphic artist, Margaret Irwin West and
printmaker Mary Plunkett. From Artisan House Publications, Letterfrack,
Co. Galway it was launched at Clifden Arts Festival 2015. Together with
reading and lecture tours of the US, McBreen is closely associated with
most of the major literary festivals in Ireland.
Her anthology The White Page / An Bhileog Bhán - Twentieth-Century Irish
Women Poets was published by Salmon Poetry in 2001 and is in its third
reprint. Her poetry is published widely in Ireland and abroad and has
been broadcast, anthologised and translated into many languages. Her CD
The Long Light on the Land - Selected Poems, read to a background of
traditional Irish airs and classical music, was produced by Ernest Lyons
Productions, Castlebar, County Mayo in 2004. She has given readings and
talks in many universities in the USA including Emory, Villanova, De Paul
(Chicago), Cleveland, Lenoir Rhynne, N.C. and the University of Missouri-
St. Louis. In 2010 she undertook a six week reading tour of Nebraska, Iowa
and Alabama and in 2012 she read at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul,
MN and at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. During the months of
October and November 2018 Joan McBreen undertook another US reading
tour of Massachusetts, Georgia and Kentucky.