Linda celebrates launch of first poetry anthology

Linda celebrates launch of first poetry anthology

1 July 2020

FOUR years after writing poetry for the first time in her life, Downpatrick woman Linda McKenna is celebrating her debut collection being published.

Entitled In the Museum of Misremembered Things, the collection of around 50 poems is inspired by Linda’s fascination of how personal, local and national history have lasting impact on our lives in the here and now.

Linda, who’s better known as the education manager at Down County Museum, has enjoyed considerable success early on in her first foray into poetry writing. 

In 2018 she won the Seamus Heaney award for New Writing and the Red Line Poetry Award respectively for her poems, Overpainted and Unsettled, both of which are included in the collection. 

Her work has also been shortlisted or commended in several other awards as well.

A vociferous reader of history and poetry, Linda admits she only began to write poetry as a personal challenge.

She explained: “I never wrote poetry at school, or anything like that, but I’ve always read it and enjoyed it. I began writing about four years ago when decided I need to do something different after a significant birthday. I went to a couple of creative writing classes and did an online course too. I rather liked one of my first poems and thought it was quite good so I stuck at it.

“I’ve had poems published in a number of journals including, Poetry Ireland Review, Crannog, the Honest Ulsterman, and the North as well as online.”

While Linda says she is a “slow writer”, most of her collection was written over the last two years. 

“The title of my collection is, In the Museum of Misremembered Things, which is also the title of the first poem in the book,” she said.

“A lot of my poems are based around historical events/themes and I am particularly interested in how our perceptions (and misperceptions) of both personal, local and national history have lasting impacts on our lives and relationships with others. 

“I try to use the locations I am most familiar with to anchor my poems and I also use incidents/images/memories of my childhood as inspiration.

“The collection includes a series of poems inspired by the language and imagery in Walter Harris’s Antient and Present State of the County of Down, written in 1744. 

“I am also interested in using women’s experiences of being, very often, ‘unheard’ in history but I am more interested in the voice of women who are seen as being ‘unheroic’ (whether that is my grandmother or mythic/biblical/historic figures) than I am in the great and dramatic heroines of history or mythology.”

Doire Press has published the book, and is known for its support of poets such as Moyra Donaldson from North Down, Glen Wilson, Stephanie Conn and short story writers including Rosemary Jenkinson.

Linda was due to have a joint launch with Rosemary Jenkinson in March followed by a reading tour, all of which has been cancelled due to the lockdown.

She has been supported by two well-known local poets, Olive Broderick and Damian Smyth, who is also the Arts Council for Northern Ireland’s head of literature.

Linda added: “While I’m disappointed at the reading tour being cancelled, my book was featured on the ‘Unlaunched’ podcast a podcast for RTE, which is devised by poets John McAuliffe, Sean Hewitt and Victoria Kenefick and on The Holding Cell readings. 

“It was also included in Damian Smyth’s summer reading review in the Belfast Telegraph. I will be doing some readings in the autumn, including at Doire’s 10th anniversary event at the Bray Literary Festival in September and I’m very grateful to Doire for publishing this collection and to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland who have supported the publication.”

In the Museum of Misremembered Things costs £10 and can be purchased online from www.doirepress.com  or from No Alibis Bookstore, Belfast.