Helen Bovaird Ryan, originally from County Down, is a former secondary school teacher in Edinburgh and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where she earned an M Phil in Creative Writing in 1999. For over seventeen years she taught Creative Writing at a Dublin Further Education College and facilitated workshops for community groups, engaging both adults and young people. Her publications include an essay on children’s literature in Robert Hogan’s Dictionary of Irish Writers, a poem in New Irish Writing (December 2021), and another in the UK online magazine Culture Matters (July 2022). Helen’s talent has been recognized with two poems shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Poetry Competition in 2023 and 2024 and she had five poems published online (January 2025) by The Galway Review.
A Blessing
Still miss you, Mum, Love you forever
a social networker drools.
All day the rancour rankles,
stretches, gnaws
my insides.
While I scrub a single potato to microwave
I can hear Patricia Mahood singing.
A strutting bird, chest puffed out
her male tenor voice fills my kitchen
A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing
And how the nuns fecking loved it,
clapped, beamed absurd over-the-top smiles,
gushed foolish praise as she thundered it out.
And each and every bloody time
I pushed down the urge to vomit
Today, I planted your favourite Snow in Summer,
knowing its silver white felted leaves
would creep, invade my new garden bed.
Yet with caring, arthritic hands I tamped it down,
and watered it until I bled
Impro
I began with a hell of an attitude,
a cliché of a cheeky working-class
teenage rebel without a cause, without ambition
He sat forward, made a double hand
gesture of openness,
a calm middle-class invitation to talk
his eyes soft with a compassion
that scored my skin like a knife
carving identity on a tree trunk.
You can tell me. I want to help.
If I could only understand then maybe
we will get through this together. Please. I’m listening.
My eyes blurred.
My throat glottal stopped.
Postgrad Teacher Training; drama option.
The tutor hovering nearby,
watched, assessed my performance
in this artificial exploration of a probable experience.
Mine was so different
and yet for the first time,
palpable, almost utterable
After class the tutor touched my arm,
whispered
‘I could see you were moved.’
I smiled, knew exactly her assumptions
glad she was already packing up,
relieved she had the gumption not to ask for to explanations;
that kaleidoscope of shifting prisms,
that secret which at all costs,
had to stay hidden
No friends ever invited home on a whim,
No teacher ever confided in.
Back then, I was a silent rebel. But
Boy, did I have a cause
A wee skitter of thirteen, a carer
did not deserve a teenage life,
I thought, back then.
So instead of becoming my drama class cliché,
I excelled at school, allowed intuition alone to propel me,
embraced for years the loneliness of not being cool,
to finally win
that golden ticket
out of prison
It’s a B flat
she calls from the hall
while my fingers fumble, search for the next note,
my musical talent stretched thin across her old piano
and she so nonchalant about her perfect pitch
which has taken her hands through decades
over yellowing ivory keys
wet afternoons she played tunes from her past,
cigarette nodding in time, between tight lips,
eyes squinting through
smoky memories of things before I was born
she sobs in a crescendo of Younger Than Springtime Are You
her passion peaking in unbearable beauty
I fidget, an uneasy witness to something beyond my young ken,
know that some day, I will understand
but right now, its lyrical cruelty stings my heart,
in rhythmic, stabbing, mesmeric beats
I’m dreaming of a White Christmas she sings in alto
her voice and face crinkle as she remembers that winter teenage night
she was playing in the upstairs parlour of the home
only ever visited for brief holidays. The door bell ringing below
sent her galloping down the staircase of her parents’ old hotel
shut when she was two years old and orphaned.
There on the doorstep stood her two brothers
in uniform, home on leave from the war,
not expected. Alive. Safe.
I’m dreaming of a White Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know
Long long long ago
way before she began to drink, I remember holidays
when she vamped the pedals, swung out swing alongside classical tunes
In the mood, You Need Hands, Cavalleria Rusticana,
This is the Army Mister Jones, Carmen, Jealousy.
Her tone would swiftly soften to play beneath
my dad’s shy singing;
My hert is ae in Scotland, tho I’m far far awa
Our living room would dim.
Dancers tangoed in syncopated nightclub passion to La Cumparsita
and nightingales sang in romantic Berkley Square.
I was there, I heard them. I saw them all.
Hated them, loved them in equal measure
Set Dance
Working in pairs
we folded corners
into rectangles
sometimes squares,
danced sister
to sister
forward back, forward back
folded again to match
corner to corner layers,
grabbed the ones below, danced back
fingers pinched tight
to hold the thickening folds
a shake of the stretched sheet
and forward again to catch new corners
smaller and smaller each huge sheet grew
A silent reel to a steady tune that only we could hear
1-2-3 and 2-2-3
We laid each fresh smelling sheet
on the sky-blue formica table, a high pile of wind-dried folded linen
that smelled of the outside and Easter whin bushes
from the fairy-fort field next door
Sheets done, now giant towels.
Thick piled gifts from Turkey, bath sheets, hand towels,
striped torn ones, patterned ones, new, faded, tattered, worn
Forward and back, corners matched
back once more
fold again, shake, pull tight
forward to match
fingers touch to catch corners, back again,
a mighty stern shake
No hands free, a set dance designed
to make the job easy
for small hands, small arms
We never once fell out of rhythm
Never once felt it was a sad chore
Yet today we no longer dance forward or back
No fingers ever touch
No forward, no back steps
across any kitchen floor
No reels, no tunes that anyone can hear
1-2-3 and 2-2-3
No rhythm. No rhyme. No reason.
The Galway Review 