Voices from the Void

By Kieran Beville

To venture on a book whose main themes touch on pain and grief is to risk a great deal. Mere autobiography will not save us from pain, any account of it must pass through the alchemy of art and craft if it is to speak to us with the comradely voice of a fellow human being. “I rhyme”, said Seamus Heaney, “to set the darkness echoing.” It is an ancient and honourable duty of the poet. Kieran Beville writes poems “...to make the pain rhyme...” There is much to be gained from reading these quiet, steady reflections on the grief and joy that goes inescapably with being human. Above all, perhaps, what the poet here so amply demonstrates: pain, if we’re able for it, can open the gate to acceptance and understanding of this one and only world we share.
— From the Introduction by Theo Dorgan

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005472368

Kieran Beville

Kieran Beville is author of Write Now – A Practical Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers' Centre, 2019). He has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and four collections of poetry (Revival Press). His book, Pulling Back the Clouds is a short biography of Mike Kelly, collector of the die-cast model aircraft display at Shannon Airport (LWC, 2020). In 2022 Beville was appointed Ollamh (Poet Laureate) for Limerick.

Book preview

The unconsidered human impulse is to wrap grief and pain in pious formulas, in slack received wisdom, in platitudes and worn-out phrases. Pain always threatens to become unbearable, and indeed it often is unbearable to anyone locked in the prison of the self.

We have songs and stories, poems, dance, painting and theatre to lift us out of that prison, to teach us that others have been through this before and survived, that others are going through it right now, that we are not alone. It takes a particular sensibility and a particular kind of courage to face into grief and sorrow and loss as Kieran Beville does in this collection of poems.

To venture on a book whose main themes touch on pain and grief is to risk a great deal. Mere autobiography will not save us from pain, any account of it must pass through the alchemy of art and craft if it is to speak to us with the comradely voice of a fellow human being. When Kieran writes:

"…starving time has devoured

all the we once savoured…"

it is not just that we all know that feeling — we are saved, somehow, by the felicity and accuracy of the words, the phrasing. When Kieran writes:

"…I do not see the music

though I can read the score…"

His careful wording allows us to share in the wisdom of understanding exactly what the words mean and can mean, to follow out the resonances of the thought.

If he did no more than offer accurate memories of grief and loss, an accurate honouring of many who have passed through the world and through his life, he would have done a great deal — after all, accuracy and clarity of expression is as rare as it is valued. Kieran does more than this, although he does it with grace and precision. For one thing, he pays us the compliment of sharing difficult, adult, truths, as when he says …time erases and is cruel. For another thing, though, and it is what gives this unsparing collection its redemptive heft and lift, he calls up for us the beauties of his world — the streets he walked, the games he played, the places he has been, his beloved mother and father — and offers us these places as refuges, the people as companions, family and friends.

I rhyme, said Seamus Heaney, to set the darkness echoing. It is an ancient and honourable duty of the poet. Kieran Beville writes poems …to make the pain rhyme. I put his book down for a moment when I read that line, all the rhymes for ‘pain’ echoing in the back of my mind, and I settled on the word ‘gain.’ There is much to be gained from reading these quiet, steady reflections on the grief and joy that goes inescapably with being human. Above all, perhaps, what the poet here so amply demonstrates: pain, if we’re able for it, can open the gate to acceptance and understanding of this one and only world we share — and poems can help you to save your own life.

— Theo Dorgan

Dublin 2021

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