Poetry of Inis Mor

The poems on the following pages were neither planned nor intended. They came rushing out one day in a café by a beach, on the Island of Bali, Indonesia, as if impelled by some other hand. My intention that day had been to begin writing a new book, Passage to Inis Mór. instead, I wrote the following poems.

Sometimes I wonder if it was the spirit of that island that evoked these words and images, for the Balinese, although an entirely different race and culture have much in common with the Irish. Its people are still closely bound to their families and their land. There is a spiritual heart to the island that one can sense wherever one goes. And their Hindu beliefs, which have supported them for millennia, are represented everywhere. Statues, paintings and carvings of their gods and demons inhabit every garden, field, village, and home.

The poems came first. Later, as I began to write the story of an old Irish Seanachie and a young man who rebuild an abandoned wooden sailing boat together, each poem fell naturally into place in the same order in which they were written.
I have not questioned this. I believe poetry, like painting, sculpture, music, dance, and all other forms of creativity come from the soul and therefore can only be understood in part by the questing mind. I offer them to you now as the carrier, rather than the actual creator, of these verses.

Brian O’Raleigh
The Island of Bali