Percy French Summer School

The good news for Percy French fans is that the inaugural Percy French Summer School will take place in Castlecoote House, Co Roscommon from July 17th to 19th. It will be a very fitting tribute to one of Ireland’s most beloved song-writers and entertainers.

But of course he was much more than that, and it will be no harm to be reminded how good a landscape painter he was and of course he was a poet too.
Check out The Percy French Society website at http://www.percyfrench.org/ to learn more about the man, see his paintings and hear a beautiful rendition of “The Mountains of Mourne”.

mc nuts

Google mcnuts. I like it.

Love Poem - Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson's poem VI in section II.Love of Project Gutenberg's Poems, Three Series, Complete (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12242/12242-h/12242-h.htm) is really beautiful. It reminds me of Auden's "Stop all the clocks..........
Isn't it wonderful to be able to access the great writers so easily!

VI

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Making eyes at you

The last post reminded me of a video I've seen on YouTube. Apparently Ida is on an evolutionary path linking humans to lemurs. I think I have a crucial piece of evidence linking the species, you may have seen the video below but is this lemur making eyes at the camera?

The Missing Link

Ida, the 47 million year old fossil primate found in Germany,is being put forward as the missing link, what with fingernails and all. And as soon as said, there’s a slew of scientists who disagree. Nothing new there, my belief is that there’ll never be agreement on that issue till a monkey rises out of Jurassic sandstone somewhere in South Africa asking for its toothbrush. Meanwhile, being endless in its philosophical ramifications and being still beyond our knowing, I think the whole area offers great potential for writers. This is from Sunfire:

Homo Sapiens.


They were anxious to put as many genera between us and ape
as possible; so each new jaw-bone, each different skull,
each new femur became a new genus.
Gradually then, all these rungs were being discovered.

Then someone said " Hey, where’s the cut-off."
No one knew, it hadn't been discovered,
or had but wasn't recognized.

So we're still waiting for him who'll come to announce:

"Hallelujah, this is The Bone, the One that'll divide the fossil record
into b.b. and a.b,
(before and after bone).”

Brian Eno

I first became interested in Brian Eno’s music in 1986 after visiting his exhibition of video sculptures in the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. I was blown away by the spacey soundtrack. I was unaware of his solo work and collaborations through the seventies and up to then, but that changed immediately. Over the next few years I bought every EG record I could find in the shops and crossed them off my list of “must haves” one at a time. It changed my music ear for ever with names like Fripp, Budd, Michael Brook, Lanois, Roedelius, Hassell, Roger Eno, Laraaji suddenly beginning to populate my record collection.

This shift in listening habits affected my writing greatly and I spent many nights writing under the mixed influences of alcohol and ‘EG music’. My interests veered off towards Reich and Glass and opened up to many kinds of music while the poetry sometimes rose with the swell and sometimes floundered.

It is a number of years now since I have written in that way and I have not been keeping in touch with Eno’s music or the others on the list.(Maybe that explains the drop off in my output). In music, I’ve been getting to know the classical composers.But Brian Eno has influenced me hugely. If I was taking a few discs to my desert island I would have to include “Discrete Music”, Apollo and perhaps one or two others. I would also be taking Laraaji’s “Day of Radiance” which Eno produced and which is one of the few albums that produces a surge of happiness every time I hear those intoxicating notes on the dulcimer. Here is the first track, I strongly recommend you listen on earphones to get the full effect.


There is an online book on Eno : BRIAN ENO HIS MUSIC AND THE VERTICAL COLOR OF SOUND by Eric Tamm at http://www2.hku.nl/~renate/blindenfotografie/documten/BE.doc
And there's a very generous video to be seen at http://www2.kah-bonn.de/1/27/livee.htm

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/

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth died in January. He along with Edward Hopper are my favourite American artists. I use art to stir ideas and emotions, and have found myself revisiting their works over and over, usually to kick-start my writing. They both use and space and emptiness in their works; figures appear alone, dreaming or lost in unfathomable thought. Houses or rooms with breezes stirring curtains, rooms devoid of life, man-made features still. They convey isolation or loneliness.

Not always of course. Wyeth has produced beautiful portraits of strong-minded, physically strong individuals with a countryish integrity in their features. He gives his models a dignity and they have a striking presence. I also think that he captures, and more accurately than other artists, the true essence of country life, the colours and textures of the rural landscape; he creates in his images an atmosphere of his home place Chadds Ford as distinct from a sterile representation.

My favourite is probably “Snow Hill” which apart from being a beautiful image is also cleverly autobiographic. It can be seen at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123274763342511309.html along with a write-up. The following YouTube video is nicely done. It was posted by andrewckk.

.

Damn Borders

Everyone knows the horrors that have arisen from the existence of borders: Cambodia/Thailand, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland. The list is long; borders always impinge on someone’s sensibilities.

My problem has arisen since since undertaking the compilation of a Roscommon Anthology. Criteria for inclusion in some respects can be simple enough; I’m using literary writers, they must have be published by a publisher of standing, they must have a significant connection with Roscommon etc. Not to have clear criteria is a recipe for a disaster, and disappointment to a lot of writers. (As it is, disappointment to some is inevitable.)

But those damned borders. Born or reared within spitting distance of Roscommon are Vincent Woods, John Broderick, Desmond Egan, Jack Harte and others. It would be tempting to call it Anthology of Roscommon and Environs but I’d have to draw the borders myself then and that would put me right up there with some serious trouble-makers.

Poems from childhood

Certain poems, songs, certain scents are very evocative of childhood. Just the a few words: “Oh to have a little house……………”, “Underneath the spreading chestnut tree………………….”; it all comes back.

The high windows, two-seater benches with ink wells, heavy radiators, wall chart with the 32 counties of Ireland, May altars. The poems were in the Young Ireland Readers along with stories of Cú Culainn, Crocks of Gold, etc.

I had a happy childhood and enjoyed my time in Roscommon CBS. Most of my teachers were very dedicated to their jobs and I liked them; a few were bullies. Almost all exercised corporal punishment; it was part of the time, normality. Hard to explain now why it was accepted.

One poem in particular has stayed with me from those days. “Young and Old” by Charles Kingsley. It was a wonderfully crafted poem with words that really flowed along and so was easy to learn. There is a pleasure to singing out, as you do in primary school, those old 19th century verses. But, oh my God, did he go for the maudlin (as was the fashion of his day). Is there a poem in the English language that matches its bleak outlook. Read the second verse and search for a rope.



Young and Old

When all the world is young lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
When all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.

- Charles Kingsley

Masks

Fancy dress and mask wearing are associated with fun but my poems in “Felos ainda serra” are not. I think it goes back to childhood memories of Halloween, but I’ve never really been comfortable at masked functions. Once donned, a wearer has license to carry on in a way completely out of character,or in character but a less pleasant part of it; a non-wearer is at a disadvantage. To take my point to the far extreme, (only to make the point) a balaclava is mask for a criminal.

Apart from the above there’s the mask we all make of our faces when circumstances require it, and for some the mask becomes essential - to cover what? I started writing this with a view to introducing one of those poems but as I went on Janice Ian’s “At Seventeen” came to mind. So here’s the poem and I feel like hearing the song too.


My head is an eggshell
intact, hollow.

Left on the ground
weather leaves its stains;

on the outside I smile that smile
which passers-by notice less and less.

All I can do
is keep widening the smile;

wider and wilder,
eventually grotesque;

they start running,
I am left alone.

Word Power, Obama and Poetry

Rhetoric has returned with Obama. More than anything else it was his careful, intelligent and incisive use of language that got him elected. It had the effect of electrifying not only fellow Americans but millions of people across the world.

Yes, of course, it was the substance of his speeches; but it was his ability to convince that made the difference. This power of words is something one might expect to appear occasionally among poets, but it has largely disappeared from poetry in this part of the world at least.

Certainly it’s an ability that comes to the fore in times of strife, (Yeats’ phrase “a terrible beauty is born” from “Easter 1916” has this essence). So one might argue that it’s the absence of outright war on our soil, but I think a majority of poets have avoided engagement with hot issues or are not sufficiently affected by the horrors of our time to write in this way. (I count myself among these.)

It’s an engagement that should be re-ignited,perhaps best done with students in secondary schools, for the sake of making poetry more relevant(and therefore more popular),for deepening the feeling and understanding that people have for what’s happening around them.

Who should instigate or lobby for such an initiative: Poetry Ireland? publishers? Association of English teachers? Amnesty Int? I don't know.

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.