President’s poem offers vision of a ‘better future’

A 1993 poem by President Michael D Higgins is central to a new video produced by the Institute of Technology in Carlow which is designed to offer reassurance to students and staff during the Covid-19 pandemic.

President Higgins has granted the Institute permission to use the poem, Take Care in the video – in fact, he is reading it.

Take Care, published in The Season of Fire (Brandon Press 1993), includes the line ‘Hold Firm. Take Care. Come Home Together’.

These are “apt and poignant words”, according to Vice-President for Development at the college Declan Doyle of ICT.

It was Mr Doyle who approached Áras an Uachtaráin asking for permission to use President Higgins’s poem in the video and the answer was a resounding ‘yes’.

The short film, which also includes drone footage of Carlow and the ITC campus, is part of an ongoing initiative to nurture a sense of community among students and staff during Covid-19.

Combining “the beauty of the President’s poetry with local images [will] to open up a world beyond the current one and help us all imagine the better future that will come”, according to Declan Doyle.

“Poetry is a powerful and soothing medium right now and we think the words in Take Care are particularly apt,” he added.

View the video on youtube.com/watch?v=IBwRBR3-lP8&t=2s.