I’m to be found in the southwest. In a place called Newcastle West. I read somewhere it used to be Newcastle, West Limerick. And then the West jumped the comma. As sure as I’m sitting here. Like the puck goat that visits in one of my stories. He’s called Geronimo.
What’s that you said – a bit of background?
Well… down the road (the N21), in Rathkeale, they can lay claim to Seán Ó Faoláin, novelist and short story writer, while here in Newcastle West the towering figure has to be Michael Hartnett, The Poet. Down in the Square you might overhear, “The Poet is back”. No need for elaboration. When we refer to tradition here in West Limerick it is the poets we recall. Ó Bruadair and the Maigue poets. They hover there in the shadows and Hartnett paid his compulsory homage with his poem A Visit to Croom 1745. Little time the Gaelic bards/poets of the 18th century had to assemble a tome of prose. A quick verse that the people might memorise and deliver in song. Their patronage gone. We still sing the rousing Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill’s Mo Ghile Mear, even if it’s all about wishing for some foreign king to come and deliver. How to emerge from under all that?
There’s the next idiosyncrasy relating to the west Limerick writer. Not just poetry but a feeling that Gaelic must be incorporated, “somehow somewhere along the way” (thanks Kris). Here we take a side road: how to shift the man-made border between north Kerry and west Limerick? Look at the map. This is a clearly defined geographical area and there has always been a very natural flow of people hereabouts. If Bearna Hill (see it there between Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale) didn’t divide us we could be rolled into one. They even know what a hurley looks like in north Kerry. That sophisticated. A nod in the direction of Moyvane, marooned on the wrong side of the Limerick-Kerry border, brings us to Gabriel Fitzmaurice, another poet who writes in both languages. Was a great friend of The Poet. And yes, a personal friend of Kristofferson. See above. And a good friend of mine. How do we shift all that off our shoulders?
Well, I have two books of poetry to my name, one bilingual and one in Gaelic. I have therefore served my time. So when a short story happens along the way it had better be distilled through the poetic condenser. Sifting through this and that. Call it Sifting. How to make stories? Whether that challenge, poetic condensation, was met is hardly for the writer to say but when the Francis Mc Manus Award came to Uncle Ned (my story!) in 2013 it demanded a second look at the various pieces in the drawer and the Irish language magazine Feasta’s acceptance of the story Ag Scríobh do Shiobhán encouraged.
Topics? Among the main preoccupations of my life have been hypocrisy in political and religious spheres and the marginalisation of certain people. In my story, It Was Noble Then, the contrast in attitudes to events in the 1916-1923 period and the more recent “troubles” is examined. In the story Fog a visit is paid to an Industrial School – and I knew a few lads who were “sent off” back in the fifties and sixties. It’s from the outside looking in. And I hope it’s a fresh and honest look. They deserve that.
What Irish person doesn’t have an experience relating to unemployment and emigration? This surfaced in Ag Scríobh do Shiobhán/Writing for Joan. A hackneyed theme perhaps but I hope it’s dealt with in a new way. The decision to translate this into English led to some soul-searching. Should I not attempt a collection in the Gaelic language?
But if you were to write them all as Gaeilge it would mean an imagining of the language as it was spoken here, how it would be now, not good enough to go back to west Kerry’s Corca Dhuibhne – even if time and financial circumstances allowed – it should be natural to here. Sidetrack! There’s another thing for the committed Gaeilgeoir: isn’t it always the reasonably well-off who can go or send their kids to the Gaeltacht? And there’s another thing – I’m on a roll – I refuse to recognise the Gaeltacht. It’s not like going to France to speak French. The Gaeltacht must be here and now, where I stand. In Caisleán Nua, in Ceatharlach, in Cabhrach. Even in Nua Eabhrac! (Yes, yes. New York.)
But. But. Among the first few comments I get are, Is this one in English? Oh great, I’ll be able to read it so! And that brings on torrents of guilt. There at my shoulder stands the crying pupil who has had another notch put on the stick about his neck – for speaking Gaelic in the schoolyard. And Hartnett’s lines return:
But I will not see/ great men go down/ who walked in rags/ from town to town/ finding English a necessary sin/ the perfect language to sell pigs in.
Not an insult to English, we love all language. But when you did your business in the towns you had to deal in English. What a weight! To change your tongue. For the coloniser.
Howsoever, the stories are written in English. And the killing thing for the writer is to make sure they “ring true” in any language! Was it Picasso who said you try to paint like a child? I love the beauty of all language in its naïve delivery. And to console myself I reread Tobias Wolff’s wonderful story Bullet in the Brain. As the local boys get organised for a game of baseball and the cousin come from Mississippi is asked what position he likes: “Shortstop. Short’s the best position they is.” Gasp. The narrator on hearing those final two words “takes to the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.” As the Yank might say, Go read.
Sifting is published by Liberties Press
