To Sligo for St Patrick’s Day
It looks like I’m going to be moving to London in the summer. I have lots of places I want to say ‘Goodbye’ to in Ireland before I leave.
Tomorrow, St Patrick’s Day, I’m off to Sligo.
Yeats country.
Sligo became very important to me over the past few years. I spent a lot of time there doing research for A Dance in Time.
And I can’t think of a more fitting place to spend Ireland’s national day. Sligo, Yeats’s mother’s county, had a profound influence on his poetic and political vision. This vision, honed by the work that he and Maud Gonne spent so much time on, was one of the key triggers of what has come to be called the “Gaelic Revival” — a movement of poetry and history, story and song that stirred yearnings for freedom in so many Irish hearts a hundred years ago.
Later in his life, after witnessing the violence unleashed by the Irish independence movement, Yeats felt ambivalent, even guilty, about the part his words might have played: “Did that playof mine send out/ certain men the English shot?”
Paul Muldoon, another Irish poet, has taken a pinprick to that: “If Yeats had saved his pencil-lead/would certain men have stayed in bed?” Politics in Muldoon’s poem is “a twisted root/with art its small, translucent fruit/and never the other way round.”
Muldoon was augmenting the voice of the English poet, WH Auden, who famously asserted in his elegy for Yeats that “poetry makes nothing happen”.
Maud Gonne would not have agreed.
Neither, I think, do I. But It’s something I want to explore.
So tomorrow, I’m taking a camcorder to Sligo to do just that. I’m hoping (the technology Gods being willing) to record my first video post for this blog. Yikes! I’m told by the trusty Romans of Agile Technologies, who set up this site for me, that it’s all very simple.
But yikes!
Wish me luck.
And I’ll be wishing you a very Happy Paddy’s Day.
Hello my dear, Just checking into your blog this evening to see how you have been getting along – excited for you that you are moving to London! I hope that means that everything is going swimmingly on the health front. Keep well and thanks for the thought-provoking blog!
How do you do it? Do you sleep with a dictionary? I have to imitate you. “I’m afraid I prefer layers to edges”. I am now going to read your current blog and comment with a similar contrast. fingers crossed! I’ll see you on the flip side
@ Steve: Helloed & Goodbyed ‘em all – Drumcliff, Ben Bulben, Glencar, Ross’s Point, Inishfree, etc. etc. And said a verse or two for poets everywhere — including your good self!
@ Holptica: Welcome to the site. I’m afraid I prefer layers to edges! Appreciate the feedback and hope you’ll call again.
@ Karen: You know Ireland is always green (i.e. wet!) You’ve heard the weeping and wailing. As for techno-skills, I’m afraid my techno-hopes outran them… TBC!
Enjoy Sligo. I had a birthday there the year I came to work with you. I’m wondering if it is still cold this time of the year and is Ireland ever not green. Looking forward to your video post
I’m impressed your techno-skills are improving in leaps and bounds!
Hello, what I am about to say might sound a bit strange but here it goes. I came to your site after reading your discussion on blogcatalog. You requested one word why you should read members blog. What I actually liked was your one word reply. I found them really compelling. So I came to visit, but your blog is a bit.. different. It does not seem to have that ” je ne sais quoi”. I was expecting it to be edgy. I did not read everything ofcourse. That’s just me.
Say hello to the Dullahan “Under Ben Bulben” and “…Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!