To
Keep The Light Burning
Reflections in
times of loss
by Anne Le Marquand Hartigan.
With a foreword by Victoria Glendinning.
Published by Salmon
Poetry 12.00 euro
You can buy this book online at Salmon
President Mary McAleese with Anne Hartigan and her poetry book: To Keep the Light Burning
"Religions have over the centuries developed rituals that provide a path for people to travel towards an acceptance of death, a form through which we can channel grief. Today some of us do not feel part of any religion. So our rituals around death may be out of step with life as we live it now. We are inventing our own rituals and searching for new words to help us express our grief and find some consolation," says writer Anne Le Marquand Hartigan.
Her new book To Keep The
Light Burning, is a collection of personal prose and poems, many of
which author Anne Hartigan feels could be read aloud at funerals, burials
or cremations, as well as privately by the individual reader to help cope
with grief.
"These are writings for now, when many need a different way to express
their loss (and may or may not choose a religious ceremony,) linked with
the traditional ways we in Ireland cope with grief, and honour our dead,"
says Hartigan. "There is a universal need for ritual and ceremony."
After an important friend of Anne Hartigan's died in August 2001, followed
just days later by the atrocities of 9/11, she was so keenly aware of
the depths of loss suffered that she decided to put together a collection
of her poems and prose, with the aim of helping other people going through
the trauma of bereavement and loss. "These two griefs became the
force and energy that fuelled the making of this book".
"Several of these poems have already found their way into the hearts
of the bereaved and have been found completely 'right'," says award-winning
writer Victoria Glendinning in her foreword to the book.
Mark Patrick Hederman OSB, Abbot at Glenstal Abbey, writes that
this book "talks about death without flinching. It is not sentimental
or sanctimonious. It gathers us around the emptiness and offers, calm,
truthful, reassuring words, 'human and comforting'."
Fintan O'Toole kindly launched this book in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin. And Soprano Elizabeth Hilliard sang a piece from the work, composed for the occasion by composer Gráinne Mulvey.
You can buy To Keep the Light Burning at Salmonpoetry.com
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