Down Memory Lane

Anne Maher

We met in the early nineteen-seventies,

Elevated by the predominant

Georgian red-brick of No. 6, Ely Place,

Facing Dublin’s Hume Street.

We came as young ladies to the Valuation Office

With its elaborately decorated plasterwork,

Following in the footsteps of Sir Richard Griffith,

Pinning our hopes on a pensionable job

In the Civil Service.

Diligent clerical assistants with nimble fingers

Answering phones, stuffing envelopes,

Wading through paperwork.

Peggy Lynch, ‘Chief-Sitting-Bull’

Over ‘MARKET VALUE’.

We worked with travelling gentlemen

Valuers with ‘good suits on their backs’

Revising land ownership

Mappers with rubbers and rulers

Bent over slender-lined drawings

Profound paper landscapes

Updating old scrunched Ordnance Survey Maps,

Our gaze longingly on the clock

Yearning for a coffee and chat

In O’Donoghue’s of Merrion Row.

Returning, we brushed past the paper-keeper:

“Give us a kiss, and a lend of fourpence!”

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 121:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.