Of Ireland

Sea Bird

The bird swept through surf-spray,

Through countries of diaphanous cloud

Cutting the sea mist with curved wing-blades.

Between cumulus she soars and sails -

Now high, lone on the horizon,

Then low, breath skimming white sea crests

Swift as emotion; her flight brief as memory -

Seeking dark eves' warmth in summer storms.

 Anna Warrington '10

In my mind I sat below the cliff face at Classiebawn in Mullaghmore, isolated and at peace. Staring out into the great Atlantic abyss, next stop America, thousands of miles beyond the horizon. That it's my favourite place is immaterial; it's more the homesickness getting to me, it's been a rough time of it here so far in patches, maybe something that my naivety hadn't catered for. Beyond the longing to be back on the island, even the recognition of my previous naivety has triggered learning signs. It's why I'm here. Stagnancy crept in. For every day spent in Mullaghmore at peace, there was at least a month spent irritated as the country was brought to its knees by greed and the eerily paradoxical 'free-market economy'. I learnt a renewed respect for the land of my birth since returning from Wales in 2006, but can't help but feel that respect had never really disappeared, more-so been pushed to one side in pursuit of personal progression. Through various jobs, that progress faltered, routine set in & life became a mundane recurrence. It happened to me, and my influence over it was held back by a part of my brain that didn't want to get too involved, the part that knew that it had regressed to a place it wasn't ready to be back in. For all the natural beauty, the people I love, the dogs that completed me, something itched at the soles of the feet, told me to move on. From the minute I landed back on the island to the minute I got on the plane to Korea, the journey was never in doubt. I needed the inspiration, and despite all the beautiful people I am fortunate enough to know that live there, I needed the distance to appreciate them the more. I am the base prototype for realising what you have when you're 8,000 miles away from it all.

So I sat there, as often before in body, but now in mind's memory. With images more lucid than any camera could capture of the waves crashing against the rocks; the sea foam caught like polystyrene in the gaps of erosion;  the haunting castle looming over the landscape, the sheer face of Ben Bulben keeping a watchful eye as the rhythm held its beat, steady and hypnotic, with the sounds that were left when the drone of humanity is muted and only the soundtrack of the natural world was audible. I watched her 'soar and sail' through the 'countries of diaphanous cloud' and my mind soared too, to a place beyond the limitations of bank loans and the rip-off republic.

I have spoken to many people about what good poetry means to me, and perhaps never managed to capture my true thoughts in a language that makes sense. Partly because my lack of fluency in Irish, the only language that my soul speaks, inhibits me, partly because I probably don't know what good poetry is. I own two books by R.S. Thomas, that cover his entire work and epitomise what strikes me as good about the art form. Whilst hating to throw definitions around, it is religious poetry, though not biblical, but instead an appreciation of man's inherent connection with the world around him. Outside of the ego, the id and the super-ego, or whatever the latest psychologists have dreamt up to categorise man's interaction with his self and others, the universal understanding that everything just is. No more and no less. I have read a lot of work by spoken word artists lately, and whilst I ultimately respect their place as artists and admire what they do, it's been grating me that the line blurs between their art form and the term 'poet'. The sycophantic back-clapping through lines too weak to correct grammar, whose claims (for the majority) to the poetic form are too raw to have yet been humbled by 'The Echoes return slow' or Kavanagh's 'The Great Hunger'. I get uneasy when people refer to me as a poet, knowing as I do the divide that exists between the words I create and the worlds created by those truly deserving of the title. It is with this in mind, along with the so-far eye-opening transition to life in Korea, that I was fortunate enough to be tagged in the poem at the beginning of this post. My ego briefly reared its head to suggest that maybe through such an honour was my path on track, justified by the respect of another's shared talent. A poem I wish I had the talent to write, and through the swift and graceful line transitions, that echoes the beauty of why I came to love the writings of Thomas.

What struck me is that we are all 'high, lone upon the horizon,' when our 'breath' isn't 'skimming white sea crests' of interaction with others. All we have is the truth our own minds create, and ultimately we are alone on our own horizon, as near or as far as we allow that to be. Too often I find people never look for what's beyond that line of vision, afraid that toying with the familiar shall imbalance their pre-conceived reality; searching so hard to find a box to climb into that they have have forgotten that all boxes are only a creation of consensus, and consensus only truly works when the numbers who vote for it are limited to one. I have arrived at an understanding with myself; good poetry is the removal of the poet from the work, words that offer themselves to the reader to take the narrative for the self, to submerge that isolated mind in the scene and have the verse belong to you alone. Too sweeping a statement perhaps, but it's why I've always felt uncomfortable around the egocentricity of 'poetry' gigs. For all the talent that exists within the movement, and it is vast and varied, there always exists the barrier of the performer, whose words whilst shared are never truly given. I don't need to be told, I just need the space to explore my own evolving ideas of truth.

My heart will always be in Ireland, as in time my body will also return. For all her ills there is a purity there in parts that is as yet untamed by subservience to the capitalistic farce. It's little wonder that in my mind's eye I am back there looking west to the ocean rather than east to the debacle that the government have subscribed the people to. I have left to gain perspective, and will return to what Thomas would describe as 'The True Ireland of My Imagination' to seek the 'dark eves' warmth of summer storms'.