I was in bad need of a chat with Patrick Kavanagh. The best I could do, however, was sit down beside him on his canal bench, clamp the Walkman to my ears and listen to his voice on an old Claddagh tape. I needed to speak with the poet on a certain subject that was preoccupying me and, as usual, he had all the answers.
"The provincial," he told me, "has no mind of his own. He does not trust what his eyes see until he has heard what the metropolis, towards which his eyes are turned, has to say on the subject. The parochial mentality, on the other hand, is never in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish."
The man from Mucker went on to say that in Ireland we are provincial and not parochial. He told me it took courage to be parochial and that whenever we do summon up that courage we are inclined to play up to the larger and neighbouring parish across the sheugh. I nodded and gazed at the ducks. The reason I needed to talk to Kavanagh this week is that I have recently been dealing with a couple of well-known English publishing houses about a forthcoming book. Although delighted that the book was definitely going ahead with one of them, I was also slightly disturbed at the sudden feeling of verification I experienced simply because they had given me the nod (albeit for an only half-written book). Certainly most of that feeling of confirmation derived from the fact that the publishers in question are an extremely reputable house - but was there also, I wondered, any of that element of benediction from elsewhere, any necessary assurance of my own worth from the neighbouring parish? Or from the metropolis?
The typical Northern institution usually refers to the North as "the province" and sees London as the metropolis: and in Dublin too - itself a metropolis - I have heard mention of "the mainland" on more than one occasion. And now that I've been given that nod from London everyone, myself included, can't see it as anything other than a promotion to a higher division. I'm wondering about these things and inclining my ear towards the Crank on the Bank as we sit together in the sunshine.
I'm well used to such questions, having worked for many years within a Northern broadcasting institution largely answerable to London. This reality always produced a constant, creative struggle between the parochial and the provincial, between those devoted to the soul of the local and those who, for genuinely practical and career reasons, lived on the Belfast to Heathrow Shuttle, constantly looking for the "network commission" and the nod.
In the television and radio milieu any kind of "network" exposure is good for everyone concerned, particularly in terms of prestige, finance and, especially, in the straightforward matter of being taken seriously. The opportunity to be taken seriously is the most seductive thing of all.
And so the benediction from London is constantly sought - such an imprimatur amounts to arrival, "making it" and becoming a valuable asset. The "network" factor is therefore vital and plays a huge part in approaches to presentation, production, direction, scripting etc. This, given its unfortunate necessity, makes a certain sense.
I ask Kavanagh if he does requests. He does, and he recites Epic, reminding me that Homer made the Iliad from a local row. Always worth remembering.
Kavanagh and others reinforced in me many years ago the premier value of the local and the conviction that you should never be ashamed of your parish. Even so, Kavanagh also confided on the bench that this is not free from danger. "There is always the element of bravado which takes pleasure in the notion that the potato patch is the ultimate," he warned. "To be parochial, a man needs the right kind of sensitive courage and the right kind of sensitive humility." I must, therefore, be careful that any potato patch in my own enterprise must be a real potato patch - not what the metropolis fancies a potato patch might be.
He had more to say on the matter and I listened carefully as he further warned about the provincial and its relationship to the metropolis. As long as this situation continues, he told me, "there will always be a market for bogus Irishness. The metropolis is not interested in the imaginative reality of provincial society. It only asks the provincial to perform. The authentic thing they look upon as indecent courage on the part of the man whose job it is to entertain them." He urged me to stay clear of The Green Fool. When I told him I had read it at school he was horrified.
He warned me also that English publishers love Irishmen and that America was worse again.
His final piece of advice was exactly what I'd hoped he'd say - to get on with it and simply do the work. Obvious enough words, but encouragement is always needed. Now for the hard part, I thought. Go home, make the coffee, have the courage of my own parish, no playing up to anybody, finish the book, be damned etc.