poignant miles of lakeside boneyard

The world is full of so much tragedy.🖤

As many of you know, I am the 2024-2025 Poet-in-Residence for the online literary journal, The Fictional Café.

One of my responsibilities is to produce and publish poetry that speaks to my heart. And when the opportunity avails itself for me to provide some personal social commentary or reveal some historical travesties through my poetry, I relish it.

My newly-published poem on The Fictional Café (see link below) speaks to a true tragedy that occurred in the Doolough Valley, County Mayo, during the Great Hunger, aka Irish Potato Famine, aka an Gorta Mór (Irish) in March 1849.

The Failures of Imperialism

“The Doolough Tragedy took place on March 30, 1849, during the time of the Famine. Starving residents from nearby Louisburgh were forced to walk 19km through the Doolough Valley to receive aid that should have been brought to them. Many people died on the journey.”

The Doolough Tragedy was one of many clear examples of the UK’s failed Imperialistic policies toward Ireland (See link below for the full backstory).

Taken in total, these recurring examples of failed Imperialism led to the massive Irish cultural divisions along Protestant and Catholic lines, ultimately resulting in the bloody militancy of The Troubles between The North and the Irish Republic.

To this day, the failures of British Imperialism, compounded by expansionist hubris and historical prejudice, continue to show their insidious impact in a diminished Irish population.

During the Great Hunger, an estimated 1M+ Irish died and another 1-2M Irish emigrated due to the abject neglect of the Protestant English landlords who mismanaged and starved the indigenous Catholic population during a massive potato blight.

The Irish population in 1845 of ~6M people was cut by 30-40% following The Famine, and it has never returned to that same population level since.

The most recent Irish Census just crossed 5M for the first time… still well short of the 6M in 1845. Sickening.

Ghosts of the Dead

The pic below was taken by me last year while visiting the Doolough Valley with my family. It is so stark and, for me, brings the story to life (or death, as the case may be).