Irish Poet Mary O'Malley in Luxembourg

On Thursday 26 June 2025, the Irish Ambassador to Luxembourg, Jean McDonald, hosted a reception for around 25 members of the Irish community in Luxembourg, with special guest Mary O'Malley, in attendance.

Ambassador McDonald welcomed everyone and said that she has "had the great fortune to bring the third wonderful Irish female poet to Luxembourg in my time here". She added that she has always been a big fan of her poetry, and that in these difficult times it is important to use poetry to make sense of everything. She concluded by reflecting on what she, Mary O'Malley, had said that it is lonely at times being a poet.

Mary O'Malley started off by speaking in Irish, then switched to English. She read a poem she wrote "some years back" about the connection between poetry and music: in trying to make sense of music lyrics, poetry can help.

She then read her poem "Uileann", adapted from a Graham Burke story about pipes that are hard to play, adapting it from bagpipes to uileann pipes. The second poem she read was from Paris: she reflected on seeing Ireland from outside, from abroad. She recalled that she wrote "Notre Dame" when it was burning.

She then read a couple of new poems she had written, introducing them about the existence of language being threatened. She explained that she was "reared between two languages", adding that her "permission to write" came in Irish. "The Irish for Knife" and "September 17", and "Lockdown Aubade" written about her first walk after the pandemic lockdown, and another about dogfish, illustrating how one can use social media to distort perceptions, all being very different poems. 

When asked about how she worked during the pandemic, she explained that her working was "fragmented", understanding that things would not be the same afterwards. She said that she was grieving for the loss of human contact, yet acknowledged that "we were among the lucky ones".

ED