Medbh's poems have appeared in a variety of anthologies. A native of County Limerick, she is the author of a previous volume of verse entitled The Making of a Pagan, published in 1990. Since that time, she has concentrated on so-called performance poetry. She won Dublin's first Poetry Slam with work that included one of the poems in the present collection. The more than two dozen poems collected here (all of them originally conceived as performance pieces) form a narrative cycle of dramatic verse concerning the potato blight and the consequent famine in Ireland during the years 1845 through 1849. Each poem is quite different in its outlook, deriving its tone from one of the members of the fictional family the poet has devised to propel the story. Together they form a sort of Greek chorus of distinct individual voices relating the tragic events. Their emotional colors range from the exuberance of the principal character Rena (a young woman of 14 at the time of the Famine) to her father Peadar's dispirited surrender. These intertwining personal histories of the family are inextricably interwoven with historical fact, and the poet renders both accurately. She has faithfully translated the music of their speech and also permitted them to speak in their own words, as when, preparing a meal, Mammy becomes weary of slicing into spuds with ``the centre gone spongy and blackened and ugly.'' Medbh's work forms a drama in verse that is at once forceful and poignant, lyrical and dramatic. Her characters draw their human substance from the depths of archetype, and not (as would have been too easy in a work of broad scope) from the superficialities of stereotype.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Poetry Ireland Review No. 64, 2000
"It (Tenant) is incredibly enthralling and moving. It brings to light the cold facts of the years 1845-1849, the injustices, the hopes that were dashed as year after year passed, the weak half-hearted efforts of the British Government to alleviate the famine, and the futile attempts at retaliation by the "boys". When I read these poems, I was "living" through the famine, and it became so personal at one stage that it brought tears to my eyes. The language is beautiful and sometimes reminiscent of Seamus Heaney or Patrick Kavanagh." Cathy Breen, Women's News, February 2000, Issue 111
"Known as a fierce and vital slam poet ('The Bard of Temple Bar'), this generous and carefully structured volume is less a collection than a series of monologues. Increasingly vivid and metaphorical, it interconnects the experience of the blight itself and subsequent familial destruction through the eyes of Rena O'Sullivan from 1845 to 1849. Medbh avoids sentiment and portentousness. Balancing form and idiom, she uses poetry for what poetry does best - invention, discursiveness, the many voices - while side-stepping cacophony.
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