Touch the Dead

by Mary Ann Mulhern

The life experience of the child echoes in all manifests of the woman. Exploration, adventure, fear and desire are all realized in these portraits of a child coming to understand mortality, and in these musings of an adult on things learned in the graveyard. Mary Ann's experiences growing up in the Holy Angels Cemetery house in St. Thomas, Ontario infuses the lines of this collection with grace and sorrow. She is the child watching her father dig gateways for love and loss; she bares her own losses and creates portraits of isolation and of community. Through this collection of poetry she breaks down the barriers of death and bereavement, and opens them to the world of the living.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Mary Ann Mulhern is a teacher who began writing poetry in 2001 during a summer writing seminar at the University of Windsor, conducted by John B. Lee.

In September of 2001, she won first prize in the Freedom Festival Poetry Contest, with her poem about Harriet Tubman , entitled, Freedom's Rail.

Marty Gervais, publisher of Black Moss Press, noticed her success and began a mentoring program that October. Since she had been in a convent for eight years
in the sixties, Gervais asked her to write about her experiences during those years.

From this came her first book of narrative poetry, The Red Dress, Black Moss Press, 2003. The Red Dress received national attention through an interview on Tapestry, CBC radio, with host, Mary Hynes.

Another life-experience which she was encouraged to write about was growing up in a "cemetery house," located at the edge of a cemetery in St. Thomas, Ontario, where her father, Patrick, was grave-digger and caretaker. This resulted in Touch the Dead, Black Moss Press, 2006. Touch the Dead was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos Award, 2007.

Mulhern was asked by Marty Gervais to research and write about the Father Charles Sylvester priest sexual-abuse case which was successfully prosecuted by crown attorney, Paul Bailey at the Chatham Court House.

The book, When Angels Weep, was launched April 8, 2008 at the University of Windsor, with over four hundred people in attendance.

When Angels Weep was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos Award, 2009.

Mary Ann Mulhern's latest book is: Sleeping with Satan, Salem Witch-hunt, 1692.

Sleeping with Satan was launched November 4, 2010.

Reviews

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The grave digger's daughter, former nun, and present poet Mary Ann Mulhern shares her peculiar childhood in this collection of poems inspired by growing up in a graveyard in the 1940s. Mary Ann, from St.Thomas, Ontario, now lives in Windsor. Her poems have appeared in Tower, the Windsor Review, Room of One's Own, and Windfall.

Touch the Dead was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos award in 2007, an award for Canadian poetry written with accessible language and imagery. The poems in this collection are directly inspired by the poet's memories of her childhood, experiences reflected and transformed into strikingly moving images. The language is intimate and narrative. Each short poem tells the story by drawing the reader into a moment from years ago. Coming to terms with mortality, but also the co-existence of life with death run through the poems making the collection very engaging.

'Root Cellar' by Mary Ann Mulhern from Touch the Dead

My father digs a root cellar
deeper than a grave
Earth takes back her harvest
apples, potatoes, turnips and squash
Seeds still alive
like a woman whose
buried children turned to ghosts
while they still had breath and eyes
to beg for sustenance
Apples for a Sunday pie
potatoes for a stew
turnips and squash streaming in a pot
Sweet resurrection

Touch the Dead and other works by Mary Ann Mulhern are published by Black Moss Press and available from Amazon.ca.