As chosen by the RTÉ Poetry Programme, our Poem of the Week is Begin by Brendan Kennelly, as read on Sunday with Miriam - listen to Brendan read it here.
Vickie McCarthy Keane suffers motor neurone disease. Her fingers stopped working. Hard work became harder work. Vickie gave up on her writing.
Last September, the Kennelly family from The Cloth Hall here in Listowel gave me a copybook full of my dad’s poems, in his own copperplate handwriting. The copybook was a treasure.
The first page reads: “Poems and indiscriminate literature by John B Keane. 20th October 1948.”
Vickie read about the copybook of poetry and was inspired to write her own poignant, elegiac poems again.
I feel in some way my dad contacted Vickie through the medium of poetry.