Revisiting Lough Ree

There is a recollection in Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia, Here I Come” that rings a loud bell in my head: Gar Private recounts a May afternoon out in a boat, fishing with his father. He remembers the fine detail: peeling paint, an empty cigarette packet floating in the water, a rowlock kept slipping. He recounts....”between us at that moment there was this great great happiness, this great joy………………an active bubbling joy”. I admire Friel for so much in his writing, but his accuracy in his encapsulation of the Irish character, and particularly that of the young man,Gareth O'Donnell, in this play is breath-taking.

I was particularly struck by this recollection, because one of my most treasured memories from childhood is very similar. My father had to visit a property on an island on Lough Ree. There is a special atmosphere around a becalmed lake in Summer warmth; it induces a sense of complete ease and, dare I say it, spiritual fulfillment. I never had Friel’s difficulties in my relations with my father, but on that lake, on that morning, my ease and pleasure in his company were complete, and I feel very grateful to have had the experience.


Revisiting Lough Ree


Morning comes colourless;
trees stoop to the lake like pilgrims
witnessing images that are riddles in the water.

A sudden shriek: “Over here, no here, over here.”
I see nothing; the lake keeps its children chilled
in ice buckets among the reeds.

Once I trailed a ripple from a boat
that beveled this water. I’ll remember the oars’
loud soft thud, slap, lick till I die.

It was June. Insects teemed on the surface.
The sun, that tanned our backs, lulled the countryside
into sleep before the fields were even cranked.

My father was there.

Now December.The lake drags its cutlery
through this cress-green landscape
with an indifference that leaves memories shivering.

Weather, Landscape,Writing

There is no doubt that the Irish weather can be exasperating. Can be! How often do barbecues have to be rushed indoors, sports days become wash outs, wedding photographers look for an alternative backdrop in a corner of a hotel foyer? No need to answer. But that unpredictability in the Irish weather has, I believe, been part of what makes this country stand out in its literary contribution to the world.

As the clouds march continuously across the Irish sky, they bring spells of rainfall followed by spells of watery sunshine, changing as they proceed the atmosphere of countryside over and over, even in a single afternoon. The quality of light changing as it is filtered through veils of different densities: one moment vivid colour, the next sombre tones as the light diminishes to something akin to a 30 watt bulb.

The clouds in quick succession might be ‘high in the heavens’ alto-cumulus, lower to the ground shower-carrying, towering cumulus, charcoal then angry blue. They might share the same sky, with almost any variation in the high, middle and low skies predicting all sorts of weather simultaneously and all with edges lit by emerging sunshine.

And so the moods of the sky flow across the landscape; a landscape that intensifies these variable moods. In Patrick Kavanagh’s poems a farm will be north-facing and wintry on one side of a drumlin, south-facing and sun-flooded on the other. One of the small farms through the midlands and into the west might for some minutes be highlighted and happy in a patch of sunlight then immediately grey and sad-looking hemmed in by a low sky, rain and the contours of the countryside. Add to this the history of emigration and famine, the story behind the walls that still divide the land into tiny fields more or less viable.

To know those who lived on these little patches of land and light, to know their stories and have the stages on which they lived their lives presented in different intensities of light and shade sets them up, almost theatrically, for the story-tellers of Ireland.

Could John McGahern have produced such wonderful, moving novels without this Irish weather or Brian Friel who so successfully evokes the feeling of what it was to be rural and Irish in his plays; not to mention “Angela’s Ashes”?

I doubt it.

Poetry Readership in Ireland

Apparently the Irish are the biggest poetry readers per capita in Europe. I am not surprised but I am a bit sceptical as to what the numbers reflect. A few years ago I read at Strokestown Poetry Festival (a very enjoyable weekend by the way). Anyway Seamus Heaney attracted a colossal audience, way beyond the numbers for any of the other events. This is to be expected, but I suspect this is reflected in book sales as well.

Secondly poetry publishers rely on Arts Council funding, this results in an unusually high number of poets being published in Ireland (per capita). A lot of readings then, and there is pressure to fill the rooms and sell the books. Thirdly, and back to festivals like Strokestown, there are a lot of poetry writers and often these are the ones attending the events and buying the books. Sydney Bernard Smith used to call it Ireland’s standing army of poets. But is there a great non-poet readership?

I think there is a real interest in poetry among those in their teens, I have found it myself in my own work. Here is where it can be encouraged and where a cohort of wide-ranging poetry readers can be nurtured. It would be nice to see a strong and innovative campaign instigated to develop the interest. Unfortunately, except for those being taught by the scattered enthusiasts, I don’t see it happening.

And while Seamus Heaney is in my mind, I wonder is there many out there that would agree that Brian Friel among all Irish writers deserves the Nobel Prize.