Why do certain things surface in your consciousness and demand to be written about? I'm pondering this because, during the last week, I've written a series of poems about northern Ireland.
Now, this a subject you'd think I'd written about too much already. My first booklets of poetry and stories (both published by Tony Curtis' Edge Press) were based entirely on my time there in the 1970s. Seamus Heaney quickly became my favourite poet and I was delighted to be able to study his work with pupils in both Merthyr and Cardiff.
So why now and to a place I haven't visited for quite a while? Of course, my wife's from Belfast, so it's never far away in her recollections and my anecdotes.
But the truth is, I can't explain it precisely. Perhaps our 35th wedding anniversary had something to do with it, as my mind returned to priests on the Falls Road (and one in Barry before I left) who, on hearing of my staunch atheism, gave our marriage ' 6 months at the most'; also, to the priest Father Ruari who was so kind, giving me instructions (more like one than the required ten!) in a relaxed fashion and listening to my heresies. It was Ruari who conducted our marriage and told everyone to kiss the person next to them in the congregation. He was the exception to narrow-minded clergy I generally encountered .
It's not as if n. Ireland has been in the news either, though Martin McGuiness (former Provisional IRA leader) did stand in the Irish Presidential election recently. He was grilled and at times condemned for his past and this brought home to me the degree of ignorance which existed in the South about the 'Troubles', as the war was euphemistically dubbed.
When I think about their lack of empathy on the whole for fellow Catholic/nationalist/ republicans it always seems symbolized by U2 and their song 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. I recall Bono's words vividly - 'This is not a rebel song!', as if he couldn't possibly make a stance exposing the brutality of the British military presence.
I always identified closely with bands like Stiff Little Fingers who, even though they used the erroneous title 'Ulster' in one song, seemed part of what was happening and understood it so intimately. This was also true of a punk band called The Starjets, whose song 'War Stories' remains one of the best about that time. In my latest book of poems I even use it as a title for a series on n. Ireland.
I wanted McGuiness to win, but knew he wouldn't. To me, he represents just how far politics in the north has moved on from bullet to ballot box, even though his party , Sinn Fein, have lost something of their idealism and socialism along the way.
My desire to write about a time and events many decades ago undoubtedly had aesthetic motivations as well.
Though I made no conscious choices, there was a restlessness inside me. I wanted to return to dramatic monologues; to try to approach that war with wit and, above all, to shift perspectives from people to inanimate objects. I wanted to address the religious implications as I had in those stories 'In Enemy Territory', but not from my own viewpoint.
The intransigence of the clergy of both sects was evident the whole time I was there. I was sacked from my temporary post in a rural Catholic school because of pressure from the local priest. My crime was discussing abortion with a class of 15 year-olds : the fact I used an article taken from an Irish newspaper was ironic. I was accused of instigating a discussion on breach births as well ..........we were actually reading the story 'Indian Camp' by Hemingway!
Shortly after this another clergyman, Rev. Ian Paisley, led the unsuccessful Ulster Workers' Strike (the previous one had brought down the power-sharing administration). He played a vital role in the occupation of our nearest town Ballymena, with lots of farmers taking over the place with tractors and trailers. The RUC (police force) ringed the town and ensured that nobody drove into it, so we couldn't do our shopping! The complicity between police, UDA (Loyalist paramilitaries.....then not banned!) and a powerful clergyman like Paisley was apparent that day. My wife had been stopped on her way to work (I was on the dole by then) by a UDA roadblock.
N. Ireland was fascinating, frightening, fierce and fruitful all at the same time and I'm still haunted by images and words : I still use 'pockle' meaning an annoyance , for example. Still with a sudden loud sound my wife will react in a gesture of panic and alarm, arms flying upwards with a gasp of fear : all those years of street warfare and bomb scares have made their mark on her.
As significant as anything else, my weather-vane brain has been turned westwards by The Waterboys' latest 'An Appointment with Mr Yeats'. I am besotted with it : from the Irish mythology of 'The Hosting of the Sidhe', the antipathy to Britain's war in 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death', Yeats' strong disillusionment with romantic nationalism in 'September 1913' and to that extraordinary pagan hymn of hope 'Let The Earth Bear Witness'. In fact, every track has been a road back to Ireland.
ALL THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
Where do you live?
Where do you work?
What school did you go to?
What's your full name?
What foot do you kick with?
How would you cut turf?
Which side of the river
and which housing estate?
When you say West I'm not sure,
when you say East it's clearer.
You say 'Dead on!' for 'It's certain!',
but what's that 'Smile like a goat a-hanging'?
Tell me, are you really living
in Ulster, the six counties or N.Ireland?
Have you ever spoken Gaelic
or, indeed, played it?
When you pray, is it a direct line to God
or have you to get a connection?
Do you eat flesh and drink blood,
or prefer an Ulster fry on the Sabbath?
Now, this a subject you'd think I'd written about too much already. My first booklets of poetry and stories (both published by Tony Curtis' Edge Press) were based entirely on my time there in the 1970s. Seamus Heaney quickly became my favourite poet and I was delighted to be able to study his work with pupils in both Merthyr and Cardiff.
So why now and to a place I haven't visited for quite a while? Of course, my wife's from Belfast, so it's never far away in her recollections and my anecdotes.
But the truth is, I can't explain it precisely. Perhaps our 35th wedding anniversary had something to do with it, as my mind returned to priests on the Falls Road (and one in Barry before I left) who, on hearing of my staunch atheism, gave our marriage ' 6 months at the most'; also, to the priest Father Ruari who was so kind, giving me instructions (more like one than the required ten!) in a relaxed fashion and listening to my heresies. It was Ruari who conducted our marriage and told everyone to kiss the person next to them in the congregation. He was the exception to narrow-minded clergy I generally encountered .
It's not as if n. Ireland has been in the news either, though Martin McGuiness (former Provisional IRA leader) did stand in the Irish Presidential election recently. He was grilled and at times condemned for his past and this brought home to me the degree of ignorance which existed in the South about the 'Troubles', as the war was euphemistically dubbed.
When I think about their lack of empathy on the whole for fellow Catholic/nationalist/ republicans it always seems symbolized by U2 and their song 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. I recall Bono's words vividly - 'This is not a rebel song!', as if he couldn't possibly make a stance exposing the brutality of the British military presence.
I always identified closely with bands like Stiff Little Fingers who, even though they used the erroneous title 'Ulster' in one song, seemed part of what was happening and understood it so intimately. This was also true of a punk band called The Starjets, whose song 'War Stories' remains one of the best about that time. In my latest book of poems I even use it as a title for a series on n. Ireland.
I wanted McGuiness to win, but knew he wouldn't. To me, he represents just how far politics in the north has moved on from bullet to ballot box, even though his party , Sinn Fein, have lost something of their idealism and socialism along the way.
My desire to write about a time and events many decades ago undoubtedly had aesthetic motivations as well.
Though I made no conscious choices, there was a restlessness inside me. I wanted to return to dramatic monologues; to try to approach that war with wit and, above all, to shift perspectives from people to inanimate objects. I wanted to address the religious implications as I had in those stories 'In Enemy Territory', but not from my own viewpoint.
The intransigence of the clergy of both sects was evident the whole time I was there. I was sacked from my temporary post in a rural Catholic school because of pressure from the local priest. My crime was discussing abortion with a class of 15 year-olds : the fact I used an article taken from an Irish newspaper was ironic. I was accused of instigating a discussion on breach births as well ..........we were actually reading the story 'Indian Camp' by Hemingway!
Shortly after this another clergyman, Rev. Ian Paisley, led the unsuccessful Ulster Workers' Strike (the previous one had brought down the power-sharing administration). He played a vital role in the occupation of our nearest town Ballymena, with lots of farmers taking over the place with tractors and trailers. The RUC (police force) ringed the town and ensured that nobody drove into it, so we couldn't do our shopping! The complicity between police, UDA (Loyalist paramilitaries.....then not banned!) and a powerful clergyman like Paisley was apparent that day. My wife had been stopped on her way to work (I was on the dole by then) by a UDA roadblock.
N. Ireland was fascinating, frightening, fierce and fruitful all at the same time and I'm still haunted by images and words : I still use 'pockle' meaning an annoyance , for example. Still with a sudden loud sound my wife will react in a gesture of panic and alarm, arms flying upwards with a gasp of fear : all those years of street warfare and bomb scares have made their mark on her.
As significant as anything else, my weather-vane brain has been turned westwards by The Waterboys' latest 'An Appointment with Mr Yeats'. I am besotted with it : from the Irish mythology of 'The Hosting of the Sidhe', the antipathy to Britain's war in 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death', Yeats' strong disillusionment with romantic nationalism in 'September 1913' and to that extraordinary pagan hymn of hope 'Let The Earth Bear Witness'. In fact, every track has been a road back to Ireland.
ALL THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
Where do you live?
Where do you work?
What school did you go to?
What's your full name?
What foot do you kick with?
How would you cut turf?
Which side of the river
and which housing estate?
When you say West I'm not sure,
when you say East it's clearer.
You say 'Dead on!' for 'It's certain!',
but what's that 'Smile like a goat a-hanging'?
Tell me, are you really living
in Ulster, the six counties or N.Ireland?
Have you ever spoken Gaelic
or, indeed, played it?
When you pray, is it a direct line to God
or have you to get a connection?
Do you eat flesh and drink blood,
or prefer an Ulster fry on the Sabbath?
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