Painting Rain

Book excerpt: Painting Rain explores an Ireland where uncontrolled development is tearing apart a sustaining ecology. Paula Meehan sifts through the lore and memory available to her: her own journey through life, the small victories and large defeats that shape a world. Hers is an ambitious meditation, from that point where private memory, mythology and ecology meet. The home, the city's heart, neglected suburban battlegrounds, all are shot through with visionary light. In poems of loss, hymns to the empty world, celebrations of people and place, Meehan confronts the darkness that everywhere threatens. These are poems that sustain belief in the power of language to reveal, interrogate and heal.