Revolutionary words

Poetry remains Ireland's magic coinage

By Jessie Lendennie
Special to The Irish American Post

Looking from the perspective of my 20 year involvement with Irish poetry, I'm struck, first of all, by its crucial role in Irish society. Years ago, when I first began editingThe Salmon  journal, I was in a Galway pub and overheard two farmers discussing the latest issue with no little authority. This surprised me then, but now I take it for granted. In a highly literate society, words are magic coinage and the refined use of words is for everyone to examine.

In the late-1980s and throughout the 1990s, literary commentary often focused on the abundance of poets, aspiring poets and poetry publications. This was welcomed by many, but some critics recoiled in horror at the number of "unworthy collections" flooding the market. The Irish Arts Council has taken steps to limit its funding to a small number of poetry books each year. There is little or no radical poetry, no poetry slams, experimental poetry or playful poetry. Poetic tradition is a serious business in Ireland.  

In fact, it seems apparent that the relatively recent expansion in poetry publishing mirrors the expansion of Ireland's economy and the breaking down of boundaries which have ensued. The arts do tend to flourish in boom times in all societies and few Western societies have changed as rapidly as Ireland in the last 10 to 15 years: from sleepy agrarian to high tech, from a rigid cannon with most of the innovative writers on the outer fringe to the Irish Writers' Centre on the Internet.

Ireland's literature, while defying easy categorization, has kept pace and been a more than adequate chronicler of the times. Still, the fear of loss of identity moves hand in hand with change. Issues of identity surface often -- British influence clings. Many Irish poets look to England for publication; yet at the same time many non-resident Irish poets now publish in Ireland. From the seminal, imaginative, provocative poetry of James Liddy, who didn't publish in Ireland for many years, to Eamonn Wall's refreshing insightful poetry which blends Irish and American perspectives, many of the poets who left Ireland in the 1970s and '80s are making profound statements which are crucial for the future of Irish poetry.

Perhaps the most notable development in the last 10 years is the number of Irish women poets now publishing collections. The White Page: An Bhileog Bhan:Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets  (Salmon, 1999) is an incisive document, painstakingly compiled by Joan McBreen -- herself a poet who began publishing in the 1980s. Prior to 1985, there were three or four women who had published in the late 1970s and found a niche: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Eavan Boland, Máire Mhac an tSaoi..
Others, such as Leland Bardwell and Eithne Strong had published several collections and been instrumental in the literary world of the '50s and '60s, but were not "establishment figures."

Again, social factors, are evident here. Women didn't come forward with their work, but they were there. Eavan Boland has quoted a woman in a poetry workshop as saying, "If I said I wrote poetry, people would think I didn't wash my windows." Yet, the time had come for change and the windows would look after themselves!

In 1986, we published the work of Galway poet Rita Ann Higgins who broke all the set rules for what was acceptable for Irish women and Irish poetry up to that time. Her closest male counterpart was Paul Durcan, and Higgins' work was regularly compared to his in the early days. 

Durcan's was a uniquely clever, ironic voice, but while he mined a rich vein of Irish wry humor and satire, Rita Ann Higgins spoke directly and with force of the working class life in the West of Ireland -- with her own brand of razor-sharp humor and scary insight. Of Higgins' first collection, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin wrote, "Her poems sharply reflect the Ireland of the 1980s and its inter-locking lives. She is witty and frightening, exposing hidden anxieties or dismissing them to make anarchic fun."

Poetry by women had the inevitable (for women's art) disparaging reviews of the "kitchen-sink-poetry" variety in those early days; but the democratization of Irish poetry had begun and was unstoppable. The expansion of publishing was welcomed by many reviewers, critics and poets who prized the pluralistic direction which Ireland was taking.  This "golden period" of the late '80s, inevitably sparked a backlash. Attacks on the quantity and quality of poetry being published began to appear from traditional quarters.

As to this, I must say that the "revolution" in Irish arts and Irish society was profound. Many deeply held institutions came to be questioned dramatically with piercing clarity -- leading from philosophical pondering of the Irish psyche to cries for radical change. Believers began to question the church they had taken so deeply for granted as scandal after scandal emerged. The role of the priest was shaken and many people began seeking a new understanding of spirituality. All of this is reflected in the voices of Ireland's poets.

Whereas Ireland has always been the country left behind, now exiles are flocking home. Not only the often derided "returned Yank," but citizens of the new Europe and refugees. Ireland as part in the new Europe provokes more questions of identity.

Mary O'Malley is one of the few contemporary poets to explore the conflicts of regional identity, the place of the Irish language in Europe and the universality of poetry. She devotes a section of her current collection to explicating the Irish response to the recent influx of refugees and asylum seekers. Irish is in a transition time -- a time of profound self-reflection. Its poets are ready.

(Jessie Lendennie is managing director of Salmon Publishing Ltd.. She can be reached at Knockeven, Cliffs of Moher, Co. Clare, Ireland. Or visit the Salmon Website at http://www.salmonpoetry.com