A Ghost in the Throat

Memoir of mother and poet, touching on her passions and ambitions, on her childbirthing and rearing, on her connection to, nigh obsession with, a particular poem and the life of the woman who composed it.

The book opens with a chapter entitled ‘a female text'; this is also a feminist text, focused on both the worth of what have been traditionally ascribed as female roles, wife, mother, keeper of the house and children, but also on the missing pieces in history and scholarship around texts created by or focused on females. 

The message is not one of being content in knowing ‘one's place', but rather being certain of one's own agency and choices. It touches on a frustrating reality, that generosity and selflessness in women's personal lives is often an overlooked fact, as accepted as it is praised until it becomes inconvenient, to the point that much of the intensive and repetitive labour of motherhood detailed here regularly goes unnoticed by society, whilst any reckless urge to help a stranger in a dangerous situation, or have yet another child, somehow deserves chastisement, even if it comes from the same instinct previously praised. She worries that her daughter will learn to give too much of her self away, as she herself cannot seem to resist doing. The author appears to lose herself in the role of mother, and has to slowly regain an identity outside it.

Such empathy is displayed towards the poem as a window into another's life story. Eibhlin Dubh is brought to life through the care of this modern female poet, even as she is continually stymied by how little factual record remains and why coughmisogyny/patriarchycough. Heartbreaking to see old patterns repeated, framing Eibhlin's story and her husband's fate in the 18th century: laws put in place by the English to subjugate the Irish, to remove pride, heritage, culture, wealth. 

So much of this book feels slightly beyond my comprehension in my refusal of gender, and with it traditional gender roles and gendered characteristics; in my lack of interest in parenting, but I won't deny the value of people recognizing connections with the past, seeking belonging and pride in their identity, their work. 

⚠️Vague, poetic reference to suicidal ideation, suicide attempt(?); medical diagnosis of at risk pregnancy and intervention required for at risk infant, detailed recounting of time in NICU, reference to children lost by other other women