The theme this month was Irish poets. Who would most probably spring to mind? Seamus Heaney, you would think? However, everyone thought that he was going to be chosen and looked elsewhere. The other most famous of Irish poets, W B Yeats, was represented in two poems. The first, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is a powerful statement of the futility of war: “Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love…No likely end could bring them loss / Or leave them happier than before”. The second, Sailing to Byzantium, told us that Ireland… “is no country for old men.”
Two members chose James Joyce, often obscure and never more so than in the short poem, A Flower Given to my Daughter. More accessible and rather beautiful is his melancholic All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters …
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going
Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the water's
Monotone.
We admired the lack of poetic pretention and the wit of Jonathan Swift’s eighteenth century Description of the Morning –
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
Dennis O’Driscoll, in his poem Missing God moves wittily betweenthe everyday and the poignant and profound, “Miss him when the linen-covered dining table holds warm bread rolls” to “Miss him when…the forces of the Oratorio converge on I Know
That My Redeemer Liveth and our contracted hearts miss a beat”.
Our final poem, When by Alice Kinsella, was originally published in The Irish Timesfor International Women’s Day 2017. It is a parody, or inspired by Kipling’s poem, If. The poet offers what makes for empowered womanhood in the face of male oppression:
When you hear every trembling word you’ve spoken
Retold as lies, from a dishonest heart;
When you have had your life, your body, broken
But stop, breathe, and rebuild yourself right from the start;
But know that you alone are just enough;
When you know not to judge on some myth of virtue
To be discerning, but not too tough;
When you know that you have to fight for every daughter
Even though you are all equal to any son;
When you know this, but still fill your days with laughter
You’ll have the earth, because you are a woman.
The poem spoken by Irish women poets can be found by clicking here
Report by Annie Clouston