Athy artist's exhibition is a celebration of women

‘Where Hazel Darling 

Taps every known Irish Dance 

into tiny feet.

A musty hall 

Reels with the shoes 

And the echoes Of swing and Dance.

Our baby steps 

March with history.’

Do you remember the above lines, which you might have seen attached to the wall in the town hall as you approached the first landing while walking the stairs to the town library on the first floor? They were taken from Denise Curtin’s book of poetry, Heartland.

Denise, a native of Athy, is married and has lived in Portlaoise for many years. She has not lost her love for the town of her birth and Athy and its people have featured in her poetry for many years. Her work has appeared in the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland, The Sunday Tribune and many other journals, and her work achieved on at least two occasions nominations for the Hennessy Literary Award.

The reason Denise is featured in this week’s ‘Eye’ is because her exhibition O’Mhna will open in the Art House, Leinster Street, Athy on Easter Saturday, 19 April, at 3pm. It will run for at least two weeks, with opening times from 11am-1pm (Monday) and 11am-3pm (Wednesday and Thursday) and otherwise by appointment (email haughey.anthony@gmail.com). Admission is free. The Art House is two doors from Bradbury’s restaurant.

The O’Mhna exhibition is a celebration of women who have made a difference and was opened in the Arts House, Stradbally on Women’s International Day 2025. The poet dedicated the exhibition to her great grandmother Catherine O’Brien Delaney [1889-1969], who lived in Stradbally and Denise wrote ‘whether it concerns knitting wraps for babies or conflict zones, creating a tiny museum in a community hospital, working as an inspirational teacher or a volunteer with the homeless, this exhibition celebrates the difference these women have made to the lives of others’. 

Among those featured in the exhibition are a number of Athy women, including the late Mary O’Murchú, who worked as a teacher in Scoil Mhuire, Athy and who taught Denise. She is remembered in the poem Modern English, the final verse of which reads:

You could have been the centre-piece 

Of any Yeats’s poems, 

 Or Shakespeare’s flower, 

Instead you were the length and breadth 

Of great words; true to you 

We remain their guardians. 

Another Athy woman remembered in the exhibition is the late Mrs Hughes of Leinster Street, whom the poet reminds us:

Mrs Hughes and her assistants 

Know you better than you know yourself 

They’ve dressed your mother, 

Aunts, Cousins and Grandmothers.

They’ll figure you out.

Between all of them.

But perhaps the fondest tribute was paid by Denise to her mother, the former Lal Malone, once of St Patrick’s Avenue, who is still happily with us and now living for some time past in Portlaoise.

She always seemed so happy, 

Designing and creating 

For us and our dolls, 

we felt so proud of her 

without knowing it, 

as we learned from her 

the craft of love. 

Many of my readers may not know that the Art House, recently opened, is intended to stimulate interest in the visual arts, which is regarded as a vital part of Athy’s heritage. The visual arts along with music, literary work and many other elements of Athy’s cultural heritage give the historic town an enhanced background to its growth over the generations. We are currently short of literary figures in Athy so the opportunity to bring Denise’s work to her home town, where the exhibition will be opened by Athy novelist Niamh Boyce, is a welcome treat for readers.

Do come along on Saturday 26 April, at 3pm and give your support to poet Denise Curtin and novelist Niamh Boyce in what is their home town.