PATRICK MORAN grew up in Templetuohy, Co Tipperary, where he still lives. In poem after poem in his new collection Green (Salmon Poetry ) he brings absolutely to life the vanished world of small town and rural Ireland.
This was a time before we joined the EU and our recently deceased Tiger was born. Moran does not condemn the past, but neither does he sentimentalise it. In ‘Relics’ he chronicles the closing of a local asylum, introducing us to those last few who resided there: “Joe Flynn - a cigarette smouldering in his lips-/recalling the times Jesus appeared to him:/bearded, his sandals squeaky on the lino.” Moran’s details are always perfect.
‘At Iniskeen’ is a fine poem in memory of Patrick Kavanagh, one of the giants on whose shoulders Moran stands. However, Moran is a far more considered and precise poet than Kavanagh was much of time. He has none of the self-pity and self-indulgence which mars much of Kavanagh’s work, with the dazzling exceptions of those few gem poems from which we could all quote lines.
My favourite poem in this collection is ‘London Irish’ which chronicles the lives of those who fled the small Ireland of the 1950s for Kilburn and Cricklewood: “They recall merry gatherings;/the women sparked in dreamy flats;/mornings they felt like mattress springs…/Now, as the closing credits roll,/a toothless drunk brags that the car/he calls home is perfect but for/cracked glass, the missing steering wheel.”
To Keep The Light Burning (Salmon Poetry ) by Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a mixture of poems and prose pieces designed to help those experiencing loss and grief. There is an introduction by Mark Patrick Hederman of Glenstal Abbey.
Some of the poems are taken from Anne’s previous collections, published by Salmon Poetry and Beaver Row Press. The poems are arranged with a piece of prose introducing each one.
‘What is poetry for?’ is the question pedantic little men like to ask. Well, one of the things poetry is for is those occasions – be they joyful or sorrowful - when the ordinary words of everyday speech fail to adequately express what needs to be said.
‘Heart’s Blood’ - on the death of a child – is a poem which, for me, brought to mind my cousin Robert who was barely a toddler when he died: “May you live in/warmlight/in kind gardens/with soft air/with light, loves, birds,/doves – animals to/play with you”.
The final poem is ‘Weighing Things Up - Four Sons to Carry My Coffin’: “I will be the last weight on your shoulders/the groove of wood cutting down on your bone.”
Poetry cannot repair our grief, no more than it can change the world, but it can help us put things in perspective at crucial times. One of the few things of which we can be certain is that each of us in turn will be visited some day by grief.
