Time for Mary Lavin Bridge

MEATHMAN'S DIARY: John Donohoe

Less than a year ago, I upset somebody in Meath County Council when covering the opening of Mary Lavin Place at her former city mews in Dublin.

IPUT Real Estate, patrons of the arts, officially unveiled and opened Mary Lavin Place on the south side of Dublin city. The square is part of the Wilton Park office development beside the Grand Canal in Dublin 2, close to Lavin's Dublin mews home at Lad Lane, which was a magnet for literary and cultural figures, as was her Abbey Farm at Bective.

I remarked that Mary Lavin had more or less been forgotten in Meath, where she was a major literary and cultural figure for half a century. The Abbey farmhouse had been razed to the ground with no outcry, and there was nothing named after her in the county. A short-lived annual Mary Lavin Season had been organised by the County Library Service until the Decade of Commemorations began, I also pointed out, acknowledging that some effort had been made.

I clearly hit a nerve somewhere in the council, because for the first time in my 30-year career in local journalism, they responded to one of my columns with a statement. They made the point that they had kept Mary Lavin’s name alive in collaborating with publishers in re-issuing her work, and in putting on performances at various festivals and events.

This missed the point of my piece that a civic or public space or street should be named after her, so that people passing and not familiar with her may ask ‘Who is Mary Lavin?’

Since that opening of Mary Lavin Place last year, a fantastic book have been published by New Island Press. ‘Gratefully & Affectionately – Mary Lavin and The New Yorker’ by Gráinne Hurley, explores the relationship between Lavin and the magazine, to which she was introduced by JD Salinger. The book looks at the letters exchanged between Lavin and her editor in New York, Rachel MacKenzie. Between 1958 and ’76, she had 16 stories published in the New Yorker. The women exchanged nearly 400 letters, and the book is more than a compendium of these. It reveals how Lavin became one of Ireland’s greatest short story writers, her writing process, her friendships with prominent literary figures of the time. Whether intentionally or not, the book also acts as a deeply incisive biography of a widow who needed the highly coveted and financially rewarding contract with the New Yorker to help her bring up three young girls as well as look after a widowed mother in gloomy 1950s Ireland.

So in light of the debate going on over the naming of the new bridge in Navan, due to be opened next month, I suggest naming it after Mary Lavin. While it’s not crossing her beloved Boyne, but the Blackwater, it is not too far away from her final resting place in St Mary’s Cemetery, where she quietly lies.