The Voyage of May Donne

The Voyage of May Donne is an odyssey poem. A tale of thefts, wonder and insult, with a protagonist by the name of May Donne. May Donne is young, gifted and precocious. She can sing clear, has a musical ear, a skull-full of story and a hand that can tell it on canvas. She is from the Land of the Dead. Not much changes there and there is not much reason to change. May has notions, precipitous emotions and a reckless drive. She leaves the Land of the Dead hungry for newness and eager to prove her prowess. May gets lost in act of finding. Visits eleven archetypal islands, known collectively as the Aty Archipelago. May sails to each in a boat with a sail made of feathers bound to a lattice, of her own design.

The structure of the poem is based on the Irish myth of Maeldún. Who leaves home to take revenge on his father’s killer and gets blown off course. The myth was an eighth century spin-off of the more popular myth The Voyage of Brendan. Maeldún’s band of warrior voyagers experience wonders, privation, intoxication and decimation on some 29 islands. Seem edly every coastal culture produces sea-odyssey stories. It is just a product of listening to the sea

This performance took the myth and shipped it to the Caribbean. The story O Broin has written is a theft. He stole the syllable structure and some framed pictures from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Voyage of Mael Duin. From him come the slimmed number of islands (11) and the magpie justice of Cultural Transmission.