An Introduction to Irish Poetry

Commentaries

Adze Head

In this poem, we hear the voice of a pagan lamenting the arrival in the country of a foreign religion whose followers seem to have some kind of mental illness. Ironic that this new religion —Christianity — would take such a strong hold on Irish consciousness.

Sunset

This is the shortest poem I could find from the period that has that magical otherworldly quality that so many of the long Irish tales of magic and heroes has. It was also probably known to one of Ireland's greatest poets, as we will see later on. 

An Invocation

This poem draws on mythology:  "the seven daughters of the sea" - from the old pagan myths... The supernatural:  "phantoms"...  and Christianity: "...the Holy Spirit". The author is covering all areas in invoking a long life for himself.  Clearly, at this date, pagan beliefs were still held concurrently with Christianity.

World Gone Wrong

In our current political climate it is perhaps refreshing to hear this ancient lament for a peaceful time and a fear that the future will be bleak.  Humanity got through the crisis that led to this poem, and hopefully will get through our current crises.

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02 The first poems by named authors

Caoilte Laments...

The poem here is written by an unnamed poet, but one who is writing as if he were the famous mythological poet Caílte mac Rónáin, said to be one of Fionn Mac Cumhaill's legendary band of warriors called the Fianna.

Obviously, our poet has nostalgia for the days of "Pagan Ireland" when warriors roamed the landscape and great deeds were done. I have cut the poem to the few stanzas that express the poet's feelings about this lost era.

 The Hospital

So here is our first named poet: Sedulius Scottus.

Who couldn't identify with the joy and humour of our poet here as he praises the work of the local hospital. Perhaps he has just been cured of some ailment himself and wants to thank the monks with this advertisement for their medical facility. Though what conditions were truly like there in the 9th Century is anyone's guess!

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03 From 1201 to 1600

Jealousy

This is one of those universal poems that could have been written in any century. This could be the lyrics from a contemporary pop song even.

The Scholar

Here we have the eternal complaint of those working for a living that students just spend their time enjoying themselves and not contributing to society. Sound familiar?

How Sweet the Tongue of the Gael

And we are already into the 16th Century... This hymn to the native language of the Island could have its parallels in poems here praising Catalan, certainly some of the claims made here for the language have been used to support the Catalan language.  I suspect this poet was worried, already, about the encroachment of English as men from Britain took increasing control of Irish territory and their language began to make inroads into everyday life on the island.

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04 From 1650 to 1800

Now we start to get the first major Irish writers who expressed their art in English.
One of the most famous from this period is Johnathan Swift, whose most famous work is, of course, "Gulliver's Travels".  It is often represented as a children's story, but the original is a series of satires on humanity and its follies; it is well worth reading the original.

Oysters

In this short ode to the power of oysters, Swift humorously praises their reputed aphrodisiac qualities.
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In the second poem by Swift, we are back to the apocalyptic warnings of someone else who feels that the world has gone wrong.

The Day of Judgement

Swift seems to have had a low opinion of the human race and here imagines God finally losing patience with us and destroying his wayward creation. It is also a damning rant against the plethora of interpretations of Christ's teaching that Protestant cults have created.
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A Mother's Lament...

The background to this poem is the rebellions of the Irish against English rule that began to proliferate throughout the 18th century. These rebellions were brutally suppressed by the English and this incident is one of the most powerful I know from the period. It also has a universal quality since such barbarous incidents are common in wars today where women are routinely raped and the cruelty of the enemy knows no limits.

One of the few good things that came out of those rebellions are the many fine folk songs in favour of Irish Independence that inspired the 19th Century Nationalists and are still sung today in pubs across Ireland. Check out the "Rising of the Moon" for example.

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If we think feminism is a modern phenomenon, then this poem from the 18th century should dispel that idea. This is a poem by the first woman in our exploration of Irish Poetry. I will quote a few more, but I found it particularly hard to find shorter poems written by women in the anthologies from which I drew my examples.

The Amazonian Gift

The language may sound archaic at times here, but the message is just as relevant today: women are as capable as men and shouldn't be denied the same means to protect themselves from danger.
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Shule Aroon

I would like to have been able to sing you a lot more songs tonight, but as the focus is on poetry I will sing you this one as it perfectly illustrates the transition period in which fewer and fewer Irish people fully understood their own native tongue and songs like this bilingual song with verses in English and choruses in Irish began to permeate the country. Eventually many English songs would contain apparently nonsensical lyrics, which were probably originally genuine Irish, but through ignorance have become mere sounds. The background to this song is the wars that England was fighting against its European neighbours. Many Irishmen joined the British army as it provided a guaranteed income and the chance of loot.  The female narrator's man is about to go off to war and she wishes to find some way to help him and ensure his safe return.

Notice that the title is written in an anglicised way of writing. The title in Irish would sound similar but would be spelt:  "Siubhail, a rúin".

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Extracts from "Blackberries"

The next extracts from a lesser known poet I chose because the first perfectly illustrates the religious divisions that still plague Ireland today. While the second illustrates the artist's desire for lasting fame. However,  the sheer volume of poetry produced will inevitably mean  that a poet who wrote hundreds of works might well only be remembered by a single poem or a couple of famous lines.  As an unknown songwriter myself, I know the feeling.

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05 William Butler Yeats

Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. The first Irishman to do so.

The Nobel committee stated that Yeats: "...gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".

 

A classic intellectual of the era, he was a man of contradictions: a Protestant with certain sympathies for the Catholics, but a hatred of priests; an Irish Nationalist who believed in negotiating Independence from the British rather than fighting them for it; a largely rational man who had a fascination for mysticism and the occult and a romantic who never managed to win the love of his life. Politically he was drawn to authoritarianism, believing that democracy was a threat to order in society, but he was also a leading figure in the Irish Literary Revival helping found the National Theatre of Ireland.

The Song of the Wandering Aengus

 

Written, aged 32, this poem perfectly illustrates Yeats' interest in mythology. Remember one of the poems we opened this session with in which a salmon enters a woman bather?
Yeats may have been inspired by that, or by the story of Fionn Mac Cumhaill's acquiring supreme knowledge from a magical salmon. While the last lines of the poem illustrate his interest in symbolism and mysticism.

 

The Wild Swans at Coole

 

Written, aged 51 during the period after the failed Easter Rising and with WWI still raging in Europe. For me, this poem seeks to find lasting beauty in nature. While the last stanza hints that even nature is subject to the law of impermanence.

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

 

The pointlessness of the First World War is summed up by this poem. If the airman has roots anywhere it is in his home village; but the clash of Empires he is involved with is too remote a cause and has little meaning to him. He is an individual who has joined the fight not for abstract ideals, but rather for "...a bit of excitement".

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Easter 1916

 

Yeats was ambivalent towards the Easter Rising. He was a convinced Nationalist, but  against armed conflict to achieve those aims. However, the brutal repression by the English following the rising, had led to a huge change in public opinion towards the idea of an Irish Republic and by the time he came to write this poem, four years after the event, he was feeling more inclined to recognise the sacrifice made by those martyrs of the independence movement. In this poem he remembers his acquaintance with some of the leading figures and recognizes that his elitist attitude had blinded him to these middle and working class people who had died in a cause for which he was sympathetic.

 

I cut the third verse because it is essentially a pastoral interlude. If I am honest, I suspect it was only there to fulfil the symbolic structure outlined in the notes below.

 

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The Second Coming

 

This final selection from Yeats' works is a favourite of mine. Written in the early 1920s it was a response to the world emerging after the end of WWI and the collapse of the German and Russian Empires, as well as the birth of many new nations that had been under Austrian or Ottoman rule. It must have seen like the end of an era. The rise of socialist alternatives would have been an anathema to Yeats the elitist. So, in this poem, he reflects on these changes in a symbol filled poem that has biblical echoes as he contemplates what will result from the new world order. It is worth noting that this fear of a collapse of the society he knew was probably  behind his later support for the Fascist Blue Shirts in Ireland and a sympathy for Fascism in Europe in general.

 

As we attempt to process the changes in our world today after the triumph of Trump, Musk and the Oligarchy, this poem suddenly seems more relevant than ever.

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06 Early 20th Century

 

Patrick Kavanagh

 

A Christmas Childhood

 

I find this a wonderful evocation of rural life and also a nostalgic glimpse into childhood.

 

Memory of my Father

 

Anyone who has got to my age and has long since lost a parent, will be able to instantly recognise the poet's feelings in this poem.

 

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Louis McNeice

 

Sunday Morning

 

I like how the poet creates a Sunday morning in a town with a few brush strokes. Then he evokes the excitement available to people free of the working week. But finally he uses the Church bells to remind us of authority and the daily grind from which we cannot escape.

 

Snow

 

This is clearly a "modern" poem, showing the influence of post WWI Poets like T.S. Elliot.

The narrative is more loose, we the reader must piece together meaning and symbolism, rather than having it handed to us on a plate as more traditional poetry did.

Epitaph for Liberal Poets

 

This poem, written in 1942 during  WWII is another poem with an apocalyptic vision of the end of one era and a horror of what may emerge. McNeice fears the end of individualism and sees no place for poets in the post-war world he fears materialise .

The Truisms

It is said that we all become our parents in old age. We lose our ideals and the things our parents tried to instil into us and we rejected will come back to haunt us.  This poem seems to confirm the truth in that.

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07 Late 20th C.

 

Thomas Kinsella

 

Mirror in February

 

We are all aware of our aging and our mortality and we can get morose about it. The poet here sums up that unease perfectly. The irony is that he wrote this when he was 34 and he lived until he was 93.
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John Montague

 

Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people

 

Another fine evocation of Rural Life and of the characters you could find there, combined with a sense that Ancient Ireland was still influencing modern Ireland, at least in the poet's childhood.

Clear the Way

In this poem the poet pays homage to the everyday Irish people who got used as cannon fodder. He also compares the reality of women's lives versus the ideal of the Catholic church of the nuclear family.

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In 1995, Seamus Heaney was another winner of the Nobel Prize for literature for: "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

Heaney's work draws largely on his life in rural Ireland. as the three poems I chose from him illustrate. He became one of the best known poets in English of the late 20th C. At one point 2/3rds of Poetry sales in English, were his books!

 

The Diviner

 

There is a matter of fact feel about this that belies the mystery of finding water by divining. That it works seems to be taken as a given, though it appears to be a gift only certain people have.

 

 The Given Note

 

The importance of Irish music is stressed here as well as the source of inspiration that an artist or musician claims.

 

Bogland

 

A great deal of the landscape of Ireland comprises bogland. The turf acquired from these areas was once the main source of heating for fires in the country. The bogs also famously preserve things against decay and putrefaction.

 

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Derek Mahon

Grandfather

The poet's tribute to his grandfather. Like Heaney, he evokes life in rural Ireland and the resilience of his grandfather's generation.

Father in Law

The dead can remain a presence in our lives through photographs on the wall and in our memories. Here the poet speculates on the father in law he never met, who died before the poet married the man's daughter.

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08   20th to 21st C.

 

Michael Longley

Wounds

The so called "Troubles" in Northern Ireland from the late 60s through to the 90s are evoked here in the crudest way by the murder of a bus conductor in his own home by a teenage youth. The wounds of an earlier war also get a mention through the memory of the poet's father.

Letter to Derek Mahon

 

Another poem dealing with the situation in Northern Ireland and the plight of non-political intellectuals faced with the tribal hate that fired the troubles.

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Paul Durcan

 

The troubles in Northern Ireland also spread to a lesser extent into the South when Protestant Loyalists carried out a number of attacks in the Republic. This poem evokes one particularly bloody bombing.

In memory of Those Murdered in the Dublin Massacre, May 1974

 

Here Durcan examines the idea of fighting and killing for a cause and the damage it can do to ordinary people who may not even care one way or the other for the idealist's dreams. The images of the poem are particularly crude and echo those of Longley in "Wounds"

Making Love outside Áras an Uachtaráin

This humorous poem evokes youth and the reality of Ireland versus the authoritarian ideal of the governments that ran Ireland in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church after independence and for nearly the rest of the 20th Century. De Valera, a staunch Catholic and authoritarian was the politician with the most influence over the country during this time as both Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and Uachtaráin (President).

 

Medbh McGuckian

 

Ah, we finish with a woman!

The Sofa

 

Medbh likes to use domestic images to say things that are far removed from domesticity.
In this poem she speculates on the role of poetry and comments on the themes often expected of it, whereas she feels the eroticism of her work is superior to all of that.

A Book of Rains

 

This is probably the most impenetrable poem I have chosen. For a background to it which may help illuminate the poem (I stress "may" help) listen to the poet explain the background and then listen to her read the poem.