Of What is Past, or Passing, or to Come

Megan, Will, Ali, Randy and Riley work to discover the secrets behind the art of poetry in beautiful Dingle, Ireland. How does the long, vibrant literary tradition impact the local writers of the present? Is it all to do with the incredible, inspiring landscape or is there something deeper? And what does it mean for the future of the art? Listen to find out!

Dingle harbor from Eask Tower

Simon:

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

W.B. Yeats

Simon O’Faolain

Megan: That is the voice of Simon O’Faolain, a local poet, reading the final stanza of the poem Sailing to Byzantium by W.B. Yeats. Yeats is a great example of poetry from the past. In this podcast, we hear from two poets who live and write here in Dingle, Ireland. We want to understand the legacy of Irish poetry on the present writers from the area, and how they are carrying a vibrant literary tradition forward. We are Megan,

Will: Will,

Ali: Ali,

Randy: Randy,

Riley: and Riley. And we want to know: Why is there such an abundance of poetry here in West Kerry Ireland? Where does it come from? And what is its future?

Simon: Irish has a very old and venerable and continuous literary tradition going back earlier than English. After Greek and Latin, it’s the oldest literary language in Europe starting from around the fifth, sixth century. So it’s not like you’re writing in a vacuum.

Famous Irish writers of the past

Riley: According to Simon, Ireland’s literary culture stems from a long history of struggle and survival despite the English attempt to wipe out the language. Irish poetry lived on through storytelling, folklore, and Sean-nos singing. County Kerry’s reputation as a hotbed of poetry grew in the 1930s literary revival.

Five authors of the Irish Literary Renaissance

Simon: Once that reputation was established, then from that time on, people who are interested in literature, and culture were coming here. I think in the modern context, that’s where it comes from, it’s a self- perpetuating thing.

Will: Okay, so, the poetry in the past influences poetry in the present. But where does it actually come from for the poet?

Nicholas: My poems, they can come from something. It can be an idea or an image or a feeling most strongly, they are feelings, but they have to be translated into concrete imagery. And some people say the poems come from somewhere else. Michael Longley, the Irish poet, was asked where did he think poems came from. And he said, “if I knew that, I’d go and live there.”

Michael Longley

Will: That is Nicholas McLachlan. He is a poet and teacher here in Dingle. But what really draws him to write poetry?

Nicholas: Poetry says things that other forms of writing can’t say. It can reach deeper parts of oneself.

Nicholas McLachlan

Megan: So, reaching those deeper parts of ourselves sounds easy, but how do you put it into words?

Nicholas: When you begin to write something, what have you got? You’ve got a blank sheet of paper. It’s very hard to improve on a blank sheet of paper. Quite often it’s just a vague thought. Tantalizing vagueness is what you’ve got in the beginning. It’s just a thought, and sometimes it comes to something and sometimes it comes to nothing.

Megan: Simon has a similar perspective on how to begin a poem. Simon says…

Simon: Why try doing the work when you can let the subconscious do it for you. I do think that the unconscious is a huge part of it. It does most of the work. Less effort, more effect is what I’d say.

Megan: For the poets, there are really no firm rules guiding their writing, just the imagination doing its work.

Nicholas: There are millions of rules, but nobody knows what they are.

Simon: As simple as possible, as complicated as necessary.

Ali: There was another common thread between these poets: the power of nature.

View from the top of Connor Pass

Nicholas: A lot of my poems begin in nature, and they move into some sort of imaginative or emotional kind of space.

Simon: A lot of what I write about has to do with land. Landscape, places, quite a lot to do with ecology and archeology. These are things that this area is quite rich in. And in that sense, I get a lot out of this area because that’s where a lot of inspiration comes from. Not something I can get anywhere else, because I don’t have that history anywhere else.

Megan meditating with a view from Dingle Lighthouse

Randy: Simon graciously agreed to read some poetry of his own. It was originally written in Irish, and translated into English. This particular poem stood out to us, because it paints a picture of the faults of memory, and the beauty of the world around us.

Simon: Bedouin.

The sod is hard with frost at dawn,

Hunkered cattle chew the cud, steam above them,

Twin mountains stand – the Géarán and the Géarán’s Point

(the names are not important, nor the words, but what is seen) –

Stand swathed in white symmetry, an abstract form

With angles straight and gentle rising on each flank

To the zenith of the two peaks, and between

There sags a narrow ridge, a perfect curve;

Saddle bow on the hard horse of the world;

Or a recurve bow in Olympian hero’s grip –

He hits the heart, the bulls-eye every time;

Or Cupid’s bow atop luxuriant lips

Which make us itch to match them to our own.

But no, those images are all wide of the mark,

For now the mind throws up a simple shape

Full of mystery and standing in the lee

Of a crescent dune deep in the desert heart,

High angles from each side to each pole-tip

– two of them – and the canvas looping down

A breathless arc between, the night had come

And next the solitary tent there winked

A small fire’s boldness in orange and gold.

It has burned clear through my mind to the far side,

How I saw it through thin purple air

At hour of star-unfolding, clear

From the window of a cruising jumbo jet,

Craning my neck forward to look back,

Wishing I need never lose the sight,

But the angle narrowed, perspective became lost

And now maybe it was just a winking fire.

Simon: I spent a long time as an archaeologist and a lot of that has been looking at the landscape and reading the landscape and its associations and its relationship to memories. So that’s kind of what this poem is about, and it’s simply about standing outside the house.

Randy: Everybody understands that feeling of not quite being able to recall something that they saw, even if it was something super important to them. Where each time you try to recall it, you stop and think, ‘that’s not quite right,’ Nicholas agrees.

Nicholas: There has to be some element of surprise or something that you look at in a different way. Something that you maybe see all the time, but now you’re seeing it with new eyes.

Randy: Poetry has evolved through time. The poets of the present find themselves inspired by the past and the beauty of the land. But what about the future?

Ali: It is a necessity to preserve and perpetuate the art of poetry. It is also our responsibility to bring new ideas to the genre, honor our forefathers, and celebrate the land. This we have attempted in the form of a collaborative poem that draws upon all that we have learned through this poetic exploration of Ireland.

Megan: The eternal art of poetry barely begun

Will: This island of rain is hiding the sun

Randy: Fog sets in and vague words tell

Riley: A blank page to cast a magic spell

Ali: Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Ali: Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Simon and Nicholas for giving us an insight into their magical worlds of poetry. We hope that we have left you with new eyes to see the world. We are Ali,

Riley: Riley,

Randy: Randy,

Will: Will,

Megan: And Megan.