Anthology giving voice to overlooked writers

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

This year has taught us many lessons about the people who matter in life.  As we watched frontline workers keeping the show on the road during lockdowns worldwide, it became apparent that the people who were keeping our shops stocked were very important. Not to mention our nurses and care-providers, our street-sweepers and rubbish collectors.  Without them, our restricted, locked-down lives would have been upended entirely.

In more carefree times, it’s easy to overlook the contribution these workers make to society, but during Covid that changed. We realised we could live without hedge-fund managers and similar high-flyers. Bin collectors, care workers, shop workers and all those who carry out physical, usually low-paid work, were vital.

Despite this, says Jenny Farrell, the editor of a new book, From the Plough to the Stars: An Anthology of Working People’s Prose from Contemporary Ireland, working-class people are frequently overlooked. And that’s particularly true when it comes to publishing.

This book with 49 writers, several of them from Galway, is helping to set the balance right. Launched on Monday night by MEP Clare Daly, it’s the second anthology of Irish working-class writers printed by UK publishers, Culture Matters, and edited by Jenny.

The first was The Children of the Nation: An Anthology of Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland, which was launched this time last year.

Culture Matters is literary platform that operates online and in print, offering a “progressive political approach to the arts and all other cultural activities”.  As part of that, it focuses on under-represented writers, explains Jenny.

A lecturer in the Department of Language and Humanities at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, German-born Jenny writes for the Culture Matters website. In early 2019, its editor, Mike Quille, approached her about producing an anthology of working-class poets from across Ireland.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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