Dr. Rhona Richman Kenneally

Dr. Rhona Richman Kenneally is an academic, an educator, an administrator and an institution-builder. Her research and projects center on Food Culture, Design, and Canadian and Canadian-Irish identity.

If I stood on the bow-backed chair, I could reach
The light switch. They let me and they watched me,
A touch of the little pip would work the magic.

A turn of their wireless knob and light came on
In the dial. They let me and they watched me
As I roamed at will the stations of the world.

—Seamus Heaney

Excerpt from Electric Light, in the collection called Electric Light

(London: Faber and Faber, 2001).

In the village, a crowd of overcoated men
sent up a cheer for progress and prosperity
for all…
			And in the length of time
it took to turn a switch and to make light
of their house, three women saw themselves
stranded in a room that was nothing like
their own, with pockmarked walls
and ceiling stains, its cobwebs and its grime:
their house undone and silenced
by the clamour of new light.

—Vona Groarke

excerpt from The Lighthouse, in Other People’s Houses

(Gallery Press, 1999): 34-35.