A Memory of Ireland Past

Since Christmas brings us back to family,loved ones and our memories of those who are gone, I thought I'd post this memory. It was another time, the mid-sixties.(from "Sunfire")


Visiting the Corsetmaker.

Miss Gately, you know, the corsetmaker; her cottage thatched and whitewashed beneath sycamores ragged with crows and their bickering.

A Sunday afternoon, my mother walking to the red door and it opened and closed and nothing else stirring for ages but ourselves in the back of the white consul with the red roof at the end of the avenue, just outside the gate;stone walls and lichen patches wallpapering our afternoon.Father dropping off in the driver’s seat while Micheal O'Hehir commentated on matches, one after another, without ever taking a breath in all that pipe smoke; matches collecting in the ash-tray all burnt to tiny black bird bones and the condensation all used up with words and faces dribbling pathetically into shapeless bad temper. Over and over: will she ever come out, can’t we go now,why do we always have to come, move your legs; till eventually she would reappear, a slap in the doorway, motor jauntily, red-headed,back to the car like it’s been five minutes or something, and Dad’s awake, reversing from the gate, back into the remains of a Sunday afternoon.

And I never knew what went on in there; never saw who opened the door,never saw a package, never heard anything about it. My father didn’t know either. I remember she took my sister with her when my sister was in secondary school;I wouldn’t have wanted to join them anyway,it was obviously a woman’s house.

Heights of Passion

It’s a long time since I read Wuthering Heights. The recent ITV mini-series was excellent, it portrayed the passion between Heathcliff and Cathy about as well as I think it could be done.

The obsession and violence, violence to gentleness, love. I think passion comes straight from our spiritual selves, that slew of forces we normally skate above, unleashed. And so I think the psychic connection between the two is a phenomenon that does exist. I also think the violence that one would expect should be abhorrent is an essential part of the experience. Having freed the beast that is passion, both see it as part of what is their shared and very naked entwinement of a life, and very much part of how they can feel what they share. Intense shows of affection and loving become very close to violence. To be less is not to be experiencing life at all. (Well that’s my stand on the matter.)

What’s interesting is that Emily Bronte had such a handle on it. But she had a short life, 1818–1848, which never got old enough to be a tired life or a cynical one. She had the isolation to free up her imagination, the environment to be acquainted with people and nature that were far from tamed, the experience of her older brother’s lack of discipline and his dying, a father who encouraged their imaginations and left them to their own devices. And if they were away from the hurly-burly of city life maybe it was a case of still waters run deep.

Google Book Settlement

It’s an unexpected turn of events to find myself considering whether I will opt into Google’s Book Settlement or not. The settlement, which I expect will affect two of my collections, requires study. It does, however, seem strange that the onus is on me (and my publishers) to opt out of a settlement which involves my own books.

The issue arises directly from the impact of computer technology on the use of printed work in books and it has ramifications that are probably not yet understood by most; most importantly by most authors. I, for one, don’t know the arguments pro and con, and doubt the deadline for deciding on my position allows me enough time to study it adequately.

So it looks as though the coming weeks will see publishers in particular gathering the relevant information in order to advise themselves and their authors on how to proceed. The consequences might well be among the most far-reaching for the business of writers and publishers ever.

Google have information online at http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/

A Child's Heaven

Boyhood. We spent countless summer hours catching minnows. They were the most happy, carefree times of my life. Maybe that’s why work doesn’t do it for me; empty hours filled with the heat of the sun and the buzzing of bumble bees in a field of buttercups and a sparkling stream running through it: that’s my idea of heaven.

Then and Now


Light cavorting on the stream,
choruses of flies on dung,
the flush green of Roscommon fields.

Whole afternoons I would spend
watching minnows dart
beneath those smidereens of sunlight.

Larder to larder, cold flowing weed,
combed fresh opulence.
No trickery in a jam jar; dull brown they died.

This morning sitting in Dublin;
smidereens of sunlight played on the ceiling
and I remembered this.

Blessed with lots of dull weather

I’m walking along Murvagh beach just south of Donegal town. It’s all but empty; a beautiful stretch, maybe two miles of pristine sandy coastline; undeveloped, unpolluted, unlittered. Looking to the southwest, Mullaghmore juts into the sea, Ben Whiskin and Ben Bulben loom above in varying shades of watercolour blue.

Ben Bulben, the most majestic gravestone imaginable; Yeats is buried at its foot under the words “ Cast a cold eye/On life, on death/Horseman, pass by!”. And not far beyond, but out of view, is the town of Sligo, arguably the most beautifully situated town in Ireland, being, as it is, between lake, mountain and sea.

Just south of Murvagh are two similarly beautiful stretches of sandy beach, Rosnowlagh and, on the other side of Ballyshannon, Tullan Strand.

Imagine these beaches at lower latitudes: a promenade of tacky bars and discos blairing music, chippers, souvenir shops with shamrock emblazoned ashtrays and woolly lerechauns, on the beach lines of deck chairs at ten euros each, grim multi-story appartment blocks, long stretches of beach cordoned off for different hotels, pedal boats, hawkers stopping you every few minutes, and the sea outside cut up with speed boats, banana boats and various other money-making geegaws.

I suppose in recessionary times this might have some appeal; but today there is only the marvellous beauty of the place, unspoiled for now, and a feeling of gratitude for dull Irish weather.

The Muse

When people are in love their minds keep turning like washing machines. Thoughts and emotions going round and around, the accompanying commentary with them. No wonder then that so much poetry has come from individuals with love issues.

Visit

When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,
we slip into one.

Questions

Can you make our car fly?

Is there a wizard's castle outside Roscommon?

Can I taste your Guinness?

Is Ritzy a boy or a girl?

Did Santa come yet?

Dad, will I die of cancer?

Ruins

There is a particular atmosphere that pervades the ruins of cottages throughout rural Ireland. I think it has to do with their former humbleness, sometimes their isolation,the fact that it our own (and not so distant) history and also knowing that the famine emptied them and left them bleak reminders of our impoverished past.

I am drawn to them: to recreate the rooms in my mind, furnish them, family and belongings, visualise what it was to read by the light coming through that window, sit at the hearth, drop the head to avoid the lintel coming through the front door.

When the ridges can still be seen in the vegetable plot or a line of fuschia still survives outside the door delineating what was the extent of their patch, it is doubly poignant. The most moving place in Ireland is, I think, the deserted village on Achill. A huddle of about 100 ruined cottages. You get a strong sense of what it was to be in a community living so closely together. While standing there, and drawing on what you know from books like Peig or maybe the film “Man of Aran”, you people the streets quite easily; the place does it for you.

The mental images can be extremely vivid, the feeling very strong: a haunting sadness, and somehow a memory. And because you know it you do not want to leave soon.
Ireland is littered with these ruins. Like holy wells, they transport you to another place, a more thoughtful place. It is good that they survive.

Flickr has a number of photographs of the deserted village at Slievemore on Achill Island and numerous others of ruins througout Ireland.

from Sunfire

The hunch-doubled thorns,
ingrown pantries
dung-puddled;
the moss-stone walls
tumble-gapped.

The nettle-cracked doorway,
lintel-fallen
byre-footed;
the cloud curtained windows
elder-berried.

The stone-sheltered air
bumbled still,
ruin-reverent;
the submerged garden ridges
dumb-founded.

Over-reach youself

At the moment I can’t just decide to send poems to publishers and that’s been the way, give or take, for three or four years. Well no, I do decide, but then I change my mind. More than before I want to wow myself. And that’s not happening.

I think I should over-reach myself. In fact, I think everyone that’s involved in creative arts should want to over-reach themselves. Those who don’t, flirt with smugness and that’s a quick route to bland average work.

I have managed it a small number of times: to write better than I’m able to, and it’s a great but very rare feeling (for me at least). But I think it’s the measure to keep at the back of one’s mind.

Goya is one of those poems in which I think I've written beyond myself. I suppose good luck is involved: the right words, images etc come to mind on queue.I suppose that's the difference: great poets don't rely on luck.


Goya.

Of course not!
Of course no one that ever cracked open a head
has seen a symphony pour out.

No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside
with its intimate and tangling caresses
drain from the split skulls of lovers

nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes
seen rafts of memories spilling,
carrying the children, the birthdays, the orchards,
the dances.

When they shot the poet, Lorca,
the bullets sailed in a universe,
yet when the blood spurted it was only blood
to them.

Poem Beside Your Hospital Bed

My father is dead many years now. He came back from a holiday in the U.S. on a stretcher. When I saw him in the hospital that first time, I was shocked: he looked radically changed. There was little doubt that his last days had come. When Kay came to visit him, he couldn't welcome her so he sang something incomprehensible tunelessly.

Poem Beside Your Hospital Bed.

Your face,
that I loved,
has changed so completely
that I already know
our time is gone.

And as dying,
like a sandstorm,
rearranges your features,
I am useless,
a cripple of words.

So if the winds in your head
will carry the smallest breath
of what I am saying, father:
let it be that
my proud years are tatters here;
I love you.

The photograph is a collage of some drafts of poems including this one; it must be from the late eighties or early nineties.But best of all is the rejection slip from Poetry Ireland.

Free Online Books

I've been using some free online books recently; it's fantastic to be able to access them so painlessly. Some of the websites are listed below. Interesting site from UCC: CELT, Corpus of Electronic Texts, for those interested in Irish culture and literature. The last site in the list has an amazing amount and range of information relating to English literature; the forums are well worth browsing through.


Hidden Cave: http://www.hiddencave.com/
Books-On-Line (not all are free): http://www.books-on-line.com/bol/default.cfm
The Online Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Classic Book Shelf (easy to use): http://www.classicbookshelf.com/library/
Harrison County Library System Online: http://www.harrison.lib.ms.us/internet_sites/online_books.htm
CELT: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/
Bartleby.com: http://www.bartleby.com/
Project Gutenberg (huge): http://gutenberg.net/
E-text.org (straight forward): http://www.e-text.org/text/
The Literature Network: http://www.online-literature.com/

At Naomh Einne's Well

One of the strangest looking holy wells in Ireland is very close to Father Ted’s house in the Burren. The frames of old electrical appliances are nailed onto trees serving \as frames for religious pictures. At least that’s the way it was a number of year’s ago when I visited.
Naomh Einne’s well is on Inis Oirr. It was probably a youngster supplementing his pocket money. The matchstick ladder was a quirky little addition. I wonder if the clear circles left behind fazed him. This poem was included in “Turn Your Head” (Dedalus Press)

At Naomh Einne’s Well

Kneeling down, the jacket off,
shirt sleeves rolled to the oxter,
he slipped his arm into the water,
scooped out the price of a pint,
then thought the better of it
and decided he’d have two.

Then again the following Tuesday
and the following Tuesday too
till there were only clear circles
and coppers on the green bottom,
a bowl in a gap in the wall,
a cross in another with a ladder
of matchsticks and thread.

Ballyshannon and William Allingham

It’s wet, wet, wet. The Erne estuary is below me. The clouds are low to the water so it disappears into white mist this side of the bar. Ballyshannon was Allingham’s town. It straddles the Erne before the river opens its mouth for the sea. On in its west side are gently rounded drumlins and southward are the spectacular Ben Whiskin and Ben Bulben mountains. It’s a landscape that can inspire with spectacular mountainscapes,tumultuous seas and quaint tracts of countryside nestling between the drumlins.

His autograph, carved on his bedroom window is on display in the local AIB bank; it was my wife’s bedroom window at one time. He lived from 1824 to 1889,son of the local bank manager. He was a fine poet, highly regardly in his time; the title of WB Yeats' article on Allingham 'A Poet We Have Neglected’ says it all. His best known poem is "The Faeries"

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

............etc.

but he carried his fondness for home with him, and everyone brought up in these parts knows "Adieu to Belashanny"

Adieu to Belashanny! where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn.
The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill,
But, east or west, in foreign lands, I recollect them still.
I leave my warm heart with you, tho' my back I'm forced to turn
Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne!

No more on pleasant evenings we'll saunter down the Mall,
When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall.
The boat comes straining on her net, and heavily she creeps,
Cast off, cast off - she feels the oars, and to her berth she sweeps;
Now fore and aft keep hauling, and gathering up the clew.
Till a silver wave of salmon rolls in among the crew.
Then they may sit, with pipes a-lit, and many a joke and 'yarn'
Adieu to Belashanny; and the winding banks of Erne!

...................etc

His ashes are buried in Saint Anne's graveyard beside Saint Anne's Church which stands high above the town.

Festival Under the Clock

The Rathmines leg of Rathmines Festival has just added two real treats to its programme, the "Legend of Luke Kelly" at 8pm, Sat 25th. Chris Kavanagh and The
Patriots recreate the sound of the legendary singer. It's been received with rave reviews everywhere and Kavanagh is by all accounts a dead ringer for Kelly.

The second is Colm O'Snodaigh of Kila who'll be presenting songs from his solo album, Giving.Fans of Kila will tell you that this is a gig not to be missed; it's at 3.30pm Sat 25th.The gigs are free and are happening in Rathmines College,under the clock :)

Rathmines Festival 2009

This year’s Rathmine’s Festival is again a mix of filmarttheatrecomedysportjazz bluesfolkdancechatparkeventswalks and much more besides.It’s still in the process of being programmed but I notice Pat Kinevane (iKeano) in association with Fishamble New Play Company are presenting “Forgotten”, Mary Kenny (Journalist) is being interviewed by Aine Lawlor (RTE), Comedians Karl Spain & Colm O`Reagan are performing on Fri April 24th.There’s a lot more to come obviously but it kicks off On Thursday 23rd with Anne Doyle cutting the ribbon.

Bioenergy for Health

I have to admit I am intrigued by bioenergy healing. In recent times Catherine has brought relief to people suffering from neuralgia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, psoriasis, stress-related conditions and a range of others.

The simplicity of the treatment is striking. Basically, by hand gestures around a person, she corrects his/her energy field, thereby freeing up energy transmission through the body. The effect is to be so painless as to suggest that nothing has happened; but by the third session in the four consecutive day treatment, clients are remarking on the improvement.

In many cases it has achieved what conventional medicine hasn’t. It has its origins in chinese medicine but it has been developed by Zdenko Domancic over the last thirty years. People from all over Europe flock to his healing sessions in Slovenia. See a film on Domancic at www.healingbioenergy.com/flashtest.htm

Catherine’s website is at www.bioenergyforhealth.com