Deirdre of the Sorrows

By Kenneth Steven

A sequence of poetry based on the tragic, ancient Irish legend, from the author of Out of the Ordinary and Iona.

The story of Deirdre of the Sorrows is widely known in Ireland, yet all but forgotten across the water in Scotland. This great tragic love story, which has its roots in the ninth or tenth century, is very much shared by both countries. For Deirdre, according to the legend, fled with her lover Naoise to Argyll. The oldest song in Scotland is believed to be Deirdre’s haunting farewell to her adopted land as she returns once more to Ireland. In this new sequence, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Kenneth Steven beautifully reimagines the legend of this love story; he brings back to life Deirdre’s journey and attempts to capture its timeless power.

“Steven tells his interpretation with a poet’s ear for telling phrasing, and a reporter’s eagerness for pace and development. There is also a great sense of place in his epic, and a brooding melancholy threaded through the initial triumph of love. Steven here writes with the music of his mother’s singing of a tale of beauty and loss, ancient and yet resonating among our contemporary uncertainties.” —Church Times (UK)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9780857909480

Kenneth Steven

Kenneth Steven is a successful poet, novelist and children’s writer who has published some 25 books. His BBC Radio 4 documentary on the island of St Kilda won him a Sony Award. His previous novel, The Well of the North Wind (SPCK, 2016), was a spiritual tale set on 6th-century Iona, whilst Beneath the Ice (Saraband, 2016) tells the story of the Arctic Sami people. He grew up in Highland Perthshire in the heart of Scotland, and now lives in Argyll on the country’s west coast; it’s these landscapes that have inspired the lion’s share of both his poetry and prose.

Book preview

PREFACE

When I first came to the idea of creating a sequence of poems telling the story behind A Song among the Stones (also published by Polygon), it felt something of a breakthrough. For years I had composed the kind of short lyric bursts that make up the vast majority of contemporary poetry collections. It felt exciting to tell a longer story in this new way, offering a miscellany of tiny windows of light into what might have been.

And so it felt right to use this form again when I began to think of a re-telling of the legend of Deirdre and Naoise (the Irish Gaelic pronounced Ny-sha). This was a tale I had grown up with: at the close of every family ceilidh, around the open fire my mother would sing ‘Deirdre’s Farewell to Scotland’, supposed to be Scotland’s oldest song. A synthesis of sound and sense, it was so hauntingly beautiful – as was the story that lay behind it – that I cried every time I heard it. I learned and remembered the bones of the legend at a very young