Maureen Weldon: Breakfast at Kilumney

Maureen Weldon reading at the Poetry Scotland Weekend, Callander 2005.
photograph © 2008, Gerald England.

The latest collection from Chester based poet Maureen Weldon is BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY.

ARGENTINA is a poem about her mother Mary, born in that country to an Irish father and a Spanish mother. At the age of six, the mother dies and Mary is shipped alone, without her six brothers, to be brought up by her aunt in Ireland. I had the pleasure of knowing Maureen's mother in later life, but these details of history were new to me.

In THIS FLAT, Maureen writes

I am writing my way out of here.
Report what is necessary, not another word

I will pack,
ten years - music and love affairs,

and then in NOTES ON MOVING HOUSE

All is stuffed in boxes
...
Then the searching, always the searching.

My favourite in the collection is the title poem

BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY

"It's a lovely way to wake up," she says.
Down the paddock, through half doors -
horse's faces.
By the back door - six cats
mewing for breakfast.
A bright-haired child bangs her spoon,
calls, "berries more berries."
The kitchen brims with toast
and newly made marmalade.
I look around this table.
in a hum of voices...
These are eyes I love...
And outside,
the yard is waiting to be busy.

Also included is Winter Respite in Grosvenor Park first published here.

MAUREEN WELDON: BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY
Poetry Monthly Press
39 Cavendish Road
Long Eaton
Nottingham
NG10 4HY
UK

ISBN 978 1 906357 31 3
£5