This Haunting Book Resureccts the Voices of Forgotten Psychiatric Patients

A writer and poet translates an eighteenth-century elegiac poem and finds her own life blurring with the poet’s across centuries. A later book turns to women recorded in the archives of a derelict Victorian mental hospital in Cork. A passerby notices the building will become modern apartments, prompting the writer to move through the archive and learn patient histories. Anna Martha, a violinist and artist, loses everything after her father’s death, becomes a probationary nurse, breaks down, and is committed to the same institution. Bridget returns to Ireland pregnant after assault in America and is transported through Cork while in labour at night. The work emphasizes the histories that are at risk of being lost when women are remembered only through the systems that held them.

"“This is a female text and it is a tiny miracle that it even exists, as it does in this moment, lifted to another consciousness by the ordinary wonder of type.” So begins A Ghost in the Throat, the astonishing prose debut by writer and poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa."

"“After deciding to translate Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire - an elegiac, longform poem by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, written after the killing of her husband in 1773 - Ní Ghríofa finds her life blurring with the poet's, despite the centuries between them.”"

"“In her new book, Said the Dead, Ní Ghríofa turns her attention once again to women from the past - only this time, her subjects are the patients of a derelict Victorian mental hospital in Cork.” When a passerby, the Reader, notices that it's going to be converted into a block of modern apartments, she begins making her way through the hospital's archive and learns about patients like Anna Martha and Bridget."

"“Said the Dead is a luminous and genre-defying exploration of the histories we risk losing when women are remembered only through the systems that contained them.” Here, Doireann Ní Ghríofa discusses haunting the archive and the patients' stories she found there."

Read at AnOther