Scéal scéil/hearsay

Celia de Fréine is a poet and playwright who writes in both the Irish and English languages. She has published nine collections of poetry and written and produced over twenty plays. We include the poem "scéal scéil" (original Irish) and "hearsay" (translated English) in this special issue as the work evocatively captures the alienations and disregard faced by many women from the health and medical systems in Ireland. This poem is from the collection Fiacha Fola, published in 2004, with the English-language version appearing in Blood Debts in 2014. The collection provides a first-person poetic account of a woman who experienced illness as a result of the Hepatitis C scandal in Ireland in which over 1,600 women contracted the virus through infected Anti-D immunoglobulin in the 1970s, something that was covered up and hidden in unethical practices of seismic mismanagement by the Irish health-care system.

Scéal scéil

Dar leis na tuairiscí raidiótá na hospidéil tar éis litreachaa chur chuig na mná uilig

ar tugadh an ghlóbailin amhrasach dóibh.Ó tharla gur bhog muidnecaithfidh go ndeachaigh mo litirse ar strae.

Cuirim scairt ar an ospidéal.Fiafraíonn siad díom ar chuala méfaoin scéal ar an nuacht.

Ar an nuacht a chuala siadsan faoi freisin.B'in an chéad uair a chuala siad faoi.Má thagaim isteach amárach

cuirfidh siad tástáil fola orm.Má thagaim isteach amárachseans go mbeidh leid acu céard atá ag tarlú.

Hearsay

According to radio reportsthe hospitals have writtento all the women

who've been given the dodgy Anti-D.We moved house—my letter must have gone astray.

I phone the hospital.Had I heard about it on the news?they ask.

They'd heard about it on the news as well.That was the first they'd heard about it.Come in tomorrow, they say

and they'll give me a blood test.Come in tomorrow and they mighthave an idea of what's going on.