Dazed In The Life

Last year I had the privilege of being published in Icarus, Trinity College Dublin’s literary magazine, one which has a special affinity for poetry. Such luminaries as Derek Mahon and Michael Longley cut their stanzaic teeth in Icarus and it remains an honour to be printed on its pages. I was a little taken aback today when I received an email from the current editor of the magazine. I had submitted a piece and it has been shortlisted to appear in the next edition but I was informed that this was “reliant on funding”. Time and again, people in the arts are left standing with a begging bowl at the first sign of economic unrest. Be it the Abbey Theatre or a small student publication, each and every artistic outlet suffers from the constant affliction known as “not having enough money“.

Icarus goes to print only twice a year. It averages less than 50 pages. It is not printed on the highest quality paper but is an elegant publication and one with a fine history. To think that it may be a victim of the Recession is as unthinkable as the National Gallery closing its doors. Hyperbole? I don’t think so. It is the death of the small publications such as Icarus which are indicative both of the lack of attention to the art of poetry, especially, and a “who cares” approach to the artistic world. I’m a big fan of sport. I’m a big fan of television and the film industry. Yet while these get large government subsidies (which, granted, are also being cut in these times, but then again, everything is), poetry, one of Ireland’s premier exports, one of our greatest national assets is allowed to waste away. It gives a lie to our great literary history, our parading of Kavanagh and MacNeice, Heaney and Mahon, Longley and Muldoon and the rest as great Irish artists, great success stories, personified national pats-on-the-back, when we allow such little defeats to pass unnoticed.

Hopefully, Icarus will survive, despite its doomed moniker. Hopefully the arts will not be allowed to decay and die as sadly can happen in times such as these. Ireland is taking the sporting world by storm, notably in rugby and golf and sport will continue to be funded because of this. Yet some of the biggest names in the UK and Hollywood are Irish actors and Irish playwrights are among the elite – McPherson, McDonagh, McGuinness. But these successes abroad must not be taken to indicate great wisdom and care in the treatment of the arts at home, because the arts continue to be the soft target most easily wounded by cutbacks. And poetry is perhaps the biggest sufferer of all. Once the greatest of art forms, it is now overlooked and to our national discredit.

Anyway, here is the poem which was published in Icarus last year. I must thank Brendan Gildea, then the editor of the magazine, for taking the figary to allow my piece to pass into the great history of Icarus. It wasn’t a poem I had pinned my hopes on but he saw an ugly duckling beauty in it worth honouring. Hopefully, funding-permitting, I might have a second such honour in the near future. 

Dodder Waters

The Dodder runs under Ball’s Bridge near my flat,

Widening, clambering over rocky shallows,

Shouting nonsense, falling into step towards Lansdowne.

Always seems a merry little river, flighty, sprightly,

Nothing doddery about it if you watch it go its way.

Last night – this morning, to be honest – I walk,

Still-warm, moon-bright, me-smiling secret walk,

I pause on the bridge to look into the river.

Cars pass with crumbling explosion;

I tune them out. Let current flow through my ears,

Carry me down, lovely, dark, stony, watery places.

With my view from the bridge, I see –

Rocks poke through, make out patterns:

Here street-lamp-lit patch, surface-deep, blaring up,

Splash of white-light, glinting prettily for anyone;

There, darker pool, somewhat deeper, somehow, now, visible.

Somehow, now, I see river-bed, pebbles, weeds

And rubbish. I wish for coins I can drop, splash, down,

Into lovely, dark, stony, watery, somewhat deeper places

Which seem much murkier but tell a clearer story.