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Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe.
Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas. In her first full-length book of poetry, fragility and strength are finely balanced, focused on the ruins of an island cottage built by her great-grandfather. Here, Cathy Galvin locates both mourning, humour and joy. The poems give a vivid, original voice to the tradition of keening, of honouring the loss of those we love.
'Cathy Galvin's rich, complex Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara is a history of Galvin's mother's native Mason Island and a tremendous elegy for her son whose heart is buried there [...] It is also a burning lyrical investigation into the power of language and those who use that power. Ethnology refers to the "elites" - visitors such as folklorists or the ethnographer Charles R Browne, who as well as attempting to steal skulls from Inisboffin, measured the heads of islanders. [...] Galvin acknowledges the paradox that Ethnology owes as much to the elites' recordings as it does to the Irish language and her upbringing within an Irish family in England. [...] Galvin is verbally adept, a master of many forms, but perhaps it is the further paradox of being so close to a language she didn't understand as a child that creates this hungry, groundbreaking book, brimming with grief and desire'...' – Martina Evans, The Irish Times
'The collection is thoughtful, provocative, and symphonic with an admirable blending of form. Cathy Galvin is a maker of storied memory.' – David Morley
'Ethnology is a book of wonders, poised on that moment when legends become myth and songs become the wind.' – Richard Skinner
‘Ethnology: a love song for Connemara is a tightly focused book. It pursues its themes with a laser-like precision. But Galvin’s world never feels monolithic. For all its emphasis on loss of both people and place, there lies beneath that an abundant sense of life, its meaning and its worth. This is, as the cliché often suggests, a book to return to, a book with real heft and stature.’ – Ian Pople, London Grip
‘Ethnology: a love song for Connemara is…a collection that is rooted in the landscape and nuances of Máisean Island and its past inhabitants. Galvin also questions what home and belonging mean when family roots have left their point of origin.’ – Emma Lee, The High Window
‘In Cathy Galvin’s brilliant debut collection Ethnology: a love song for Connemara published by Bloodaxe Books, she portrays the impact of migrancy, both inward and outward. […] Cathy has written a beautiful paean to her Irish roots in Connemara and Coventry.’ – Peter Raynard, Proletarian Poetry