Consistent with a lifelong openness to learning and to challenge, it is appropriate that Mamo McDonald should publish a debut collection in her eighties. Writing with the particular perspective of ‘a woman of age’, the poems express strong attachments to family and to community. A talent for storytelling comes through in many poems. This draws us in to the concerns of their characters seen through a lens that is appreciative of lives and ‘spakes’ that might otherwise be considered unremarkable. Mamo’s is a warm, empathic voice in poems that engage in a candid, often humorous, way with everyday challenges of living and ageing.
– Ann Leahy
Mamo’s poems reflect her commitment to family, community – ‘Clones is my town/ here I have lived and loved’ – and her involvement in the world outside. Her original voices express loves and sorrows of a long life with humour and courage, an older woman’s way of gathering herself up and moving on so we feel with her, as in the ending of her title poem, ‘all would be well/ and all was well’.
– Rosy Wilson