Responses, Poetic and Otherwise, to Ireland's Mother and Baby Home Tragedy
by Susan Millar DuMars MAR 12
The Tuam Mother and Baby Home operated between 1925 and 1961 in Tuam, County Galway, a small town just down the road from where I live now, on the west coast of Ireland. The Home, run by Catholic nuns, was for unmarried pregnant women and their offspring. Many of the babies born there ended up being more or less sold to American couples. Others were fostered and/or adopted within Ireland, while others when old enough were sent to industrial schools; the abuse suffered by children in these schools is now a matter of public record.
In 2014, amateur historian Catherine Corless announced she had found documentary evidence that 796 babies and young children died in the Tuam Home during the thirty six years it was open. Some in the media treated her claim with scorn. If her numbers were correct, it would mean the infant mortality rate at the Mother and Baby Home was several times the average in the country at the time.
On Friday, March 3rd of this year, the Irish Times reported an excavation at the site of the Home had discovered a large number of human remains disposed of in disused septic tanks. The remains appear to be those of infants and toddlers. (
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/soci...-human-remains-found-at-former-home-1.2996599 ) The bodies were wrapped in cloths and stacked in the tanks. An inventory of the site is continuing.
And now there is grief. Now horror. Now the naysayers are silent and the voices being heard are those of the people who were born in this place, and survived. They are telling us stories of such savagery that it's hard to believe they are true. Yet we know they are. Really, we did anyway. But now we have the physical evidence so we can't pretend we don't know. No one can pretend anymore. This is an excruciating moment in Ireland's nationhood.
There will be more excavations, on sites across the country. It is believed there are thousands more baby bodies, hidden away.
Many poets have been moved to respond. My husband Kevin Higgins was one of the first. In recent days, poets Elaine Feeney, Liz Quirke, Jess Traynor, Deborah Watkins and myself have all published or republished poems that try to respond to the tragedy (Jess lives in Dublin; the rest of us are right here, in County Galway). The poet Chris Murray has used her wonderful website Poethead to draw attention to these works. (Chris does incredible work for women and for poetry; what a debt we owe to her.) Here is the link to my poem,
Sunflower, on Poethead:
https://poethead.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/sunflower-by-susan-millar-dumars/ . It's a short poem, and I hope you will read it and explore and enjoy the site.
On Thursday, March 9th, I was a guest on The Eileen Keane Book Show, on Connemara FM. I read
Sunflower and two of my other poems, and Eileen and I conversed about the Tuam Home, among other things.
Here is the link to the podcast of the programme -- I'm on first, followed by some wonderful music and thoughtful book reviews from Tim Heanue, Caroline Kai and Eileen herself.
http://connemarafm.com/Audio/Eileen-Keane-Show.m4a . (Eileen and I agreed that
Little Green, the Joni Mitchell song about giving up a baby for adoption, was a suitable track to play directly after our chat.)
It was a difficult interview for me; not because of Eileen, a welcoming host who is an accomplished poet in her own right. It's difficult being an American living in Ireland and commenting on this situation. Is it my place to comment at all? At such a fragile potential turning point for a country I love, what can I say that will help?
Well, here are three things:
As a woman, I hope we can all finally understand, now, that anti-abortion laws are not about protection, but control. I hope that 796 small corpses in septic tanks will end, once and for all, the idea that the Catholic Church and the Irish State have anything to teach the rest of us about the sanctity of human life. I think that ends here.
I hope that those who were contemptuous of Catherine Corless' work will be treated in the same way the world treats Holocaust denyers. Because that is what they are.
Finally, I hope that all who are affected by this tragedy -- the living and the dead -- find peace.
http://susanmillardumarsislucky.blogspot.ie/2017/03/responses-poetic-and-otherwise-to.html