Iniskeen Road, Dublin Four

The anthology of poetry from which so many of us were introduced to 'serious' poetry was only ever intended to be an interim anthology. If you check the inside cover you will find that it was introduced in 1969, the summer of love and indeed many students have fallen in love with its contents through the years.

In school, we would often have been told that great poetry is timeless. At the tender age of seventeen, the word 'timeless' means very little except that it describes the average length of most classes. As I have grown older I have come to realise that what our English teacher was trying to get us to understand was that great poetry records the most common of human behaviour and so acts as a mirror for the world.

Take, for example, Kavanagh's 'Iniskeen Road'. If ever a poem has remained fresh in terms of language and description, this is it. If you haven't read the poem, I can assure you that you have been a character in the work many times over. If one has ever attended a nightclub (or dishcoh as they are known in some parts of the country) then one has stepped into the world so vividly described by Ireland's most honest of poets. The bicycles have been replaced by taxis but everything else is the same.

The dance floor is crowded. Groups of boys and girls dance excitedly to the latest number one. Sometimes the groups are mixed, in other cases it appears as though invites are needed to break the monopoly of one sex over the other. At the bar, a few lads lean casually against the counter, nursing the one drink they can afford for the night. They rarely talk to each other. They have no need. These guys share a language so unique and universal that with a slight wink of the eye or a nod of the head in a general direction they can convey they only message that matters on a night like this: "If we weren't so busy here at the bar, she'd be the lucky girl tonight!". A gentle nod from the commrades and the mission has been completed. The target has been identified and marked and who knows, perhaps in a parrallel universe, one of them might pluck up the courage to ask her out.

If one were to stand outside, one would hear the constant pounding of the bass rhythm and one would hear voices, faceless and faint, beneath the cacophoney that is now called music.

Why would anyone stand outside?

Sometimes the disco just isn't your thing. I hated discos. For a start, I could never figure out why one would pay £5 to get into a place so that they could spend the night buying overpriced beer and shouting at people who couldn't hear them anyway! Of course, there were other reasons not to attend but now is not the time to go into tham. Suffice to say that there are many of us who hated discos and were only too glad to leave that part of our lives behind us.

Kavanagh was one of us. Many of my friends used complain that Kavanagh was a grumpy poet and a bleak one at that. I cannot argue with this because he is bleak, grumpy and depressing. But then again, the country he describes was bleak, grumpy and depressing. People like to look back and imagine their childhood worlds to have been wonderful and gay. The Ireland that Kavanagh describes was dark and dreary and under the influence of several competing factors. The clergy, the media, the politicians and the parents all made strides to control and limit the world in which people could express themselves. The dance was the one place where expression was permitted. Under the watchful eye of the local parish priest, Billy Brennan's patrons began to develop an expression all of their own. As they developed this 'wink and elbow language of delight' a new Ireland was born.

This, of course, is not the reason why Kavanagh stayed outside. He was a poet and felt like the outsider. I know this because it's what I was told and even reading it again now, it is quite clear that he wears his unease at the prospect of socialising like an old battered coat. He was one of us. He didn't like to go in because it simply wasn't his scene. He preferred 'solemn talk' to dancing. I guess he had two left feet too.

Soundings, the book, lasted 33 years on the Irish Leaving Cert course.

Kavangh has done slightly better.

Iniskeen Road : July Evening

 The bicycles go by in twos and threes--
 There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
 And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
 And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
 Half-past eight and there is not a spot
 Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
 That might turn out a man or woman, not
 A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.


 I have what every poet hates in spite
 Of all the solemn talk of contemplation
 Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
 Of being king and government and nation.
 A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
 Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.