BALLYMURPHY poet and academic Eilish Rooney is set to read her poems which reflect on the Ballymurphy inquest at an online event this week.
The event will take place at 12:30 on Wednesday 6 October and will be chaired by Prof Siobhán Wills who this week takes up the post of Director at the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute.
The poems reflect on Eilsh's time attending the Ballymurphy inquests and also contain family pen portraits of each of the victims.
Earlier this month, Eilish told the Andersonstown News how the poems came about.
“To begin with, it felt like one particular poem needed to be written. The very first poem, ‘Waste Ground’ was written on the basis of listening to military evidence at the inquest," she said.
“When I started with that, I didn’t have any notion of publishing these poems. As I stayed with the writing of that poem I began to think of other notes that I had taken down and also the experience of being there.
“Each poem is a reflection of some of the experiences that the families went through in the inquest. When I got a number of the poems written I started to think about writing a poem for each of the Ballymurphy families and their loved ones.”
Eilish also wrote poems based on the personal testimonies that each family submitted to the inquest which she got access to thanks to the families and Ciarán Cahill at Springhill Community House.
You can register for the event here.
