I was going to do a long introduction to this but I have changed my mind.
On the 10th February, 2009, Noel Keogh died. He won't mean a lot to anyone who lands on this page, but he meant a lot to me. In life, he guided me through college by encouraging me to believe in myself, something he never managed of himself.
He was like a brother to me. I miss him.
Rest in peace Noel.
The Bridge
On that night we stood
side by side in the pouring rain,
arms outstretched, reaching
for what seemed an eternity.
The heavens touched us.
The rain, heavy as I can ever remember,
found us out
and soaked us in the moment.
Streamlets caressed our faces
dropping gently onto the shining pavement
whispering the truth of the unity we had found.
"Do you feel free?" you asked.
And we stood there; time a thing of the past.
There is nothing that can bring us back
to the dark ecstacy of that night.
Nothing a local hero
can pull from the raging waters
to rescue the absolutes that we had discovered.
They run through my fingers,
fluid and fickle.
Only the streamlets remain,
caressing my face,
offering cold comfort
in the light of day.
Now, it is my turn to ask.
(c) A. Jackson 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
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 The bicycles have been replaced by taxis but everything else is the same.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.
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.
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.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
And so, Ladies and Gentlemen...
What do I write about at this stage?
She walked in and some of us revelled in the terrific irony that those she had come to impress were no longer in the hall. Grand entrances should be well timed and let's be honest, she had got it all wrong.
Looking back, as you will have noticed I tend to do, I can no longer recall her face, nor can I recall any of the speeches that were given on any given night. What I do recall is how important these nights were for so many of us. Not because it was a chance to meet girls but because it was a chance not to meet girls.
The lads who left the debate early had a particular gift. Very often this gift was confined to the fact that they were good looking and grls liked them. They could 'chat-up' girls very easily because girls spent their time approaching them so that they too could look cool. I don't deny that I was jealous of those students and perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind that jealousy lingers. I wasn't the best looking guy in the school and, as I have shown earlier, I was incapable of talking to any girl.
The important thing was that I was not alone and the Friday night debates proved this. Those of us who got excited about the girls schools coming to town had all the insecurities of a security guard carrying a fistful of diamonds through one of the better parts of Cork city at 2am on a Thursday morning. However, ,we still had one skill that so many of the cools didn't have. The ability to talk in front of a crowd and not get embarrassed.
When the speakers on the floor had finished their attempts at convincing us that what they said was true the real debate began. One by one, the nerds would stand up and say their piece. This didn't happen in any random fashion. There was a hierarchy and we all know our place within it. It allowed those of us who were new to the discipline to watch the old pros before standing up to have our say. The statements were sharp, the humour pointed and the insults well-aimed. The audience would wake-up and the atmosphere became somthing almost tangible. As the adrenaline flowed for those thirty minutes or so, it was easy to forget that one was not the best looking or most popular in the room because one could create an alternative persona and hide behind it in public. For those thirty minutes we were alive, we were heard and most importantly of all we were the centre of attention. And we had no hair gel!
When the vote was taken it was all over. We became faceless creatures once again and blended seamlessly into our surroundings. What I remember now is that the really important part of the evening began although I did not realise it at the time. The few of us who shared the same interests and inhibitions would slowly make our way towards the city centre. I suppose we walked slowly so that we could savour the last morsels of whatever magic had enveloped us earlier in the evening. We talked excitedly about the most clever of statements that had been made and without ever requesting it, we informed one another of her reaction to each and every one. Then we went for a burger and chips, laughed some more and took the bus home.
By Monday the debate woud be old news except for those of us who were there to order the meal with a Coke. We had not gone, nor had, as yet, any desire to attend the teenage discos that were held around the city on Saturday night. We would smile at the stories we were told about the cools and their gang and secretly wish that we had been ready to take that first big step into discoland.
Which leads me to my next point...
She walked in and some of us revelled in the terrific irony that those she had come to impress were no longer in the hall. Grand entrances should be well timed and let's be honest, she had got it all wrong.
Looking back, as you will have noticed I tend to do, I can no longer recall her face, nor can I recall any of the speeches that were given on any given night. What I do recall is how important these nights were for so many of us. Not because it was a chance to meet girls but because it was a chance not to meet girls.
The lads who left the debate early had a particular gift. Very often this gift was confined to the fact that they were good looking and grls liked them. They could 'chat-up' girls very easily because girls spent their time approaching them so that they too could look cool. I don't deny that I was jealous of those students and perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind that jealousy lingers. I wasn't the best looking guy in the school and, as I have shown earlier, I was incapable of talking to any girl.
The important thing was that I was not alone and the Friday night debates proved this. Those of us who got excited about the girls schools coming to town had all the insecurities of a security guard carrying a fistful of diamonds through one of the better parts of Cork city at 2am on a Thursday morning. However, ,we still had one skill that so many of the cools didn't have. The ability to talk in front of a crowd and not get embarrassed.
When the speakers on the floor had finished their attempts at convincing us that what they said was true the real debate began. One by one, the nerds would stand up and say their piece. This didn't happen in any random fashion. There was a hierarchy and we all know our place within it. It allowed those of us who were new to the discipline to watch the old pros before standing up to have our say. The statements were sharp, the humour pointed and the insults well-aimed. The audience would wake-up and the atmosphere became somthing almost tangible. As the adrenaline flowed for those thirty minutes or so, it was easy to forget that one was not the best looking or most popular in the room because one could create an alternative persona and hide behind it in public. For those thirty minutes we were alive, we were heard and most importantly of all we were the centre of attention. And we had no hair gel!
When the vote was taken it was all over. We became faceless creatures once again and blended seamlessly into our surroundings. What I remember now is that the really important part of the evening began although I did not realise it at the time. The few of us who shared the same interests and inhibitions would slowly make our way towards the city centre. I suppose we walked slowly so that we could savour the last morsels of whatever magic had enveloped us earlier in the evening. We talked excitedly about the most clever of statements that had been made and without ever requesting it, we informed one another of her reaction to each and every one. Then we went for a burger and chips, laughed some more and took the bus home.
By Monday the debate woud be old news except for those of us who were there to order the meal with a Coke. We had not gone, nor had, as yet, any desire to attend the teenage discos that were held around the city on Saturday night. We would smile at the stories we were told about the cools and their gang and secretly wish that we had been ready to take that first big step into discoland.
Which leads me to my next point...
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