POETRY FOR PEACE

Herstory’s Poets in Residence Niamh McNally and Zara Meadows have penned a series of powerful and insightful poems inspired by their experiences of growing up and living in Belfast, and collaborations on projects such as Peace Heroines and Herstory for Peace with our partners in Cyprus.

You can read their poems below, but first an introduction to our visionary poets…

Zara Meadows is a writer from the Greater Shankill in Belfast whose work has been published widely in magazines across the UK and Ireland, such as The Stinging Fly, Banshee, bath magg, Fourteen Poems, and Trumpet. Zara is the incumbent President of the Queen’s University Writers’ Society, and she is in final year of an English with Creative Writing degree there.

Niamh McNally is a Belfast-based poet and activist. She completed her Masters in UU and was co-creator and editor of The Paperclip, a student-led publication. Her poetry can be found in The Tulsa Review, Howl: New Irish Writing, and Tir na nOg. Niamh's work has featured on the BBC and in two climate crisis/human rights films, 'It Seems' and 'Defining Hope'.

Shannon & Erin is a collaborative poem

by Niamh McNally and Zara Meadows

Eleventh of July

By Zara Meadows

That evening you walked the length of the garden

in Muckross to watch the cows on the hill’s downward

spiral graze & gallivant, slow bodies on a monochrome

death-march, was my favourite. The sky

was a healed bruise on God’s right shoulder

& four hours north a drum was beating arrhythmia

into assonance again, the ritual beauty of the great

violation of silence. My father let you look through his

binoculars, pointing out to you the Quaker house

on McGillycuddy, the sitting room light on, the dinner

half swallowed down. From my house back home

by Hazelbank, I could glean across the vacuum yours

in Castlereagh, so clearly it killed sight in me forever.

I can measure a mile with my finger. This is political & absolute.

PEACE HEROINES

By NIAMH MCNALLY