Irish immigrant and poet Eamonn Wall is profiled by Patrick Hicks of Augustana University in Sioux Falls.
In his poem "Brewery, Millwill, Riverfolly", the New World's westward expansion in America intersects with the Old World of Ireland. Wall alludes to the sympathies shared between Indigenous Americans and the Irish, both groups having had their language, culture, and land torn from them by the insurmountable fist of colonization.
The poem read in this episode illustrates his reconciliation with the divergent history he has as an immigrant. The home he knew in Ireland and the home he has made in America call both call to his heart from across oceans, and returning to one or the other means to miss the changes in his absence.
