Book description
Painting Rain explores an Ireland where uncontrolled development is
tearing apart a sustaining ecology. Paula Meehan sifts through the
lore and memory available to her: her own journey through life, the
small victories and large defeats that shape a world. Hers is an
ambitious meditation, from that point where private memory, mythology
and ecology meet. The home, the city's heart, neglected suburban
battlegrounds, all are shot through with visionary light. In poems of
loss, hymns to the empty world, celebrations of people and place,
Meehan confronts the darkness that everywhere threatens. These are
poems that sustain belief in the power of language to reveal,
interrogate and heal.
Paula Meehan was born in Dublin where she still lives. She was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin and at Eastern Washington
University. She has published five previous collections of poetry and
received many awards for her work including the Denis Devlin Award of
the Irish Arts Council (An Chonthairle Ealafon) for DHARMAKAYA, which
Carcanet published in 2000. She has also written plays - for stage (for
both children and adults) and for radio - and held a creative writing
fellowship at University College, Dublin. Meehan has worked with inner
city communities and conducted workshops in prisons.
