Landscapes, Histories and Mythologies: The Poetry of Ireland

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Maiya: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Joe and I have a wonderful episode ahead of us today where we are talking about the poetry of Ireland. We'll be focusing on the geography of the Irish landscape, the weight of history, and the mythology of modern life. Now we have to be mindful of the fact that we are trying to condense thousands of years of poetry and history into one kind of hour-long episode. So I'm gonna hand over to Joe to do a bit of a summary of the key things that we need to know before going into this episode.

And then as we get through to the poems today, we'll obviously pick up on any really important bits that we might have missed

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. So, long-term listeners of Beyond the Verse will remember that we did an episode on Japanese poetry, I think in season two or three, and I'd really suggest going to listen to that episode if listeners haven't already. And we're going to be kind of treating this episode in a similar way, asking ourselves what [00:01:00] makes Irish poetry distinct, what characteristics does it hold, and unlike Japanese poetry where there are some really specific forms that are distinctly Japanese.

Irish poetry, it's a little bit more complicated, a little bit less exact in terms of what makes Irish poetry different from Scottish poetry, Welsh poetry, English poetry, American poetry. And there are thematic issues and there are issues informed by the geography, the religion, the history, as Maiya has alluded to.

We're going right back into ancient history now, because it's important to mention that Ireland was never, unlike the majority of Wales, England and Scotland, was never colonized by the Roman Empire, and that means that it retains a kind of cultural distinctiveness that is different to the rest of the British Isles. Um, obviously affects its architecture, it affects how interconnected it was, because obviously, as we all know, the Romans are very good at building roads, etc, etc. It also means that the kind of Irish Celtic mythology remains stronger for longer than the Romans.

on the country of Ireland than it did in Wales or in Scotland, for example, and that kind of cultural inheritance, that mythic inheritance, [00:02:00] is going to be really, really important as we move forward into some of these poems. So jumping forwards, you know, several hundreds, maybe even a thousand years, to 1170, where the Earl of Pembroke, Strongbow, as he was known, led the invasion of Ireland by the quote-unquote English, and I'm using quote-unquote there because You know, that word doesn't mean, you know, what it means in today's parlance, but effectively a force led by Strongbow came from the British mainland onto the country of Ireland and led the conquest of the nation.

Very important to know that Ireland was not a unified country prior to Strongbow's arrival. It was a series of, rival kingdoms, each with their own, you know, kings, aristocracy, etc. And that's going to be really, really important as we get to the poetry of W. B. Yeats and many writers of that era, the kind of around the 20th century, are attempting to look back and kind of slightly recast Irish history, but we'll come to that.

So 1170 is a really important date and it becomes very iconic as we move forward into the modern day because there is this notion that England or Britain has been a pressing on Ireland [00:03:00] for 800 years that year 1170, going to be really, really important. When we move forward to the poetry of the Troubles in the late 20th century, but again, we shall come to that.

I'm trying to draw these connections early just to remind listeners that the history of this island is so important to understanding the culture, the poetic output of the writers from there. Next important event I want to focus on is the period of time spent by Oliver Cromwell in Ireland in the middle of the 17th century.

Now many of our British listeners will know Oliver Cromwell as an important figure in the English Civil War. In Ireland he is interpreted and viewed very very differently because the four-year kind of period that he spent in Ireland was absolutely brutal. It is speculated and there’s no way of verifying the exact numbers, but it's believed that around 20 percent of the population of Ireland was killed during this period, and many historians have cast this as an act of genocide.

this is really, really important for several reasons. It's not just the violence that was enacted in the moment, it's also the kind of legacy that it's spun out. And what I mean by that is, over the next 200 years, there was a settler movement in [00:04:00] Ireland. Scottish and British Protestants were effectively given land in Ireland and encouraged to settle the land with the idea that it would effectively subdue the Irish because Ireland was a Catholic country and there was always a threat that Ireland might be used as a kind of landing zone for an invasion of the British mainland by Catholic European forces like the Spanish.

So there was this notion that Ireland needed to be subdued, Ireland needed to be brought into line and the easiest way to do that was to settle it with Protestants loyal to the British state and later the British crown after the restoration. Numbers here are absolutely staggering. So two-thirds of land in Ireland was taken from its Catholic inhabitants and given to the Protestants, a lot of that was in the northeast in, the province of Ulster, which now makes up Northern Ireland. And this is really, really important for understanding how Ireland develops because it means that the Catholic population shifted southwards and shifted westwards towards lower quality farming lands that, uh, were not as rich. was defined by bogs that we're going to come on to explore later on. And it means that effectively you have [00:05:00] beginnings of the religious, economic divides that are going to go on to define a lot of the conflict that follows and obviously define the current borders in many ways of the United Kingdom right up until the day uh the border between the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, as we shall come to.

The next major event I'd like to come to, and this is where we're going to introduce our first poem, is the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845 and runs to about 1852, and I use that term because that's the term that listeners will understand the most. there are many who would like to see this event renamed. Because famine implies it was solely due to the failure of a crop, and it's true the potato crop failed in Ireland, but there are other, social factors, political factors, that meant that the death toll and hat the destruction the famine caused was much, much worse, because...

Under British rule at the time, there was a view the British government didn't do enough to help the people of Ireland. And again, the numbers here are staggering. So in 1845, the year the famine broke out, three million people in Ireland relied on the potato for 90 percent of their caloric intake.

And the potato crop failed multiple years in a row. So again, absolute [00:06:00] devastation . The population of Ireland was around eight, eight and a half million at the time. A million people died and a million people emigrated during the famine. And the population of Ireland today is still less. Than the population of Ireland before the famine.

It is an event that still defines so much of the kind of cultural inheritance of Irish people to this day. it's an incredibly iconic event in art, incredibly iconic event in film and TV.

And, of course, in poetry, which is where we come to our first poem today, which is Eavan Boland's ‘Quarantine’. Eavan Boland was a 20th and 21st century poet, an unbelievable writer who passed away in 2020, one of my favorite poets, and we're going to be reading her poem ‘Quarantine’ today, which is first published in 2001.

Maiya, would you like to read some of that poem for us?

Maiya: Well, firstly, thank you for that wonderful summary. Joe, you know, I know we've got so much more to get into, but I think a lot of the key themes that you've illustrated there,I would really encourage listeners to keep in mind as we move through the poems that we're gonna talk about Obviously, Joe andIwill draw connections where we can, but these poems [00:07:00] are so charged and so rich in history and culture and you know, mythology and the significance of that cannot be understated.

But for now, I'll read an extract from ‘Quarantine’ in the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people, a man set out from workhouse with his wife. was walking, they were both walking north. She was sick with famine, fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and west and north. Now this is just an extract, but this poem is emotionally devastating. Joe,I know this is one of your favorite poems, butI find the language in this so beautiful and you know, so simplistic at times. ButI find the language in this, even though at times it's very simplistic. There's a real emotional charge that is carried through each line of this. And I'm sure you can from the way thatI was reading it, that it's a very somber poem. It's very much focused on the individual lives of the people that we're talking about in [00:08:00] this poem. But Joe, where do you want to start with this poem?

Joe: I think I'd like to start with those opening lines, because to my mind there's something about the cadence of those first lines in the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people that really evokes...

Uh, Dickens, the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, et cetera, et cetera. while the cadence of those lines is evoked, there's no sense of balance in the language. In Dickens' opening, there is a sense that each of the characteristics is offset by the other.

Whereas in this poem, Boland really focuses in on... How dire the situation is, and it's relentlessly dire. It's everything, it's the worst. And the other thing I love about this opening, and I think it's so affecting,

is the way it establishes scale. Because we begin the poem with the idea of an hour, a single hour.

And we gradually get bigger, season, year, and then ultimately we end up with the entire history of a population, only for the poem to then zoom back in again. So we start small, we expand outwards to realise the sense of scale, the sense [00:09:00] of the magnitude of the moment in which the poem is set, before zooming back in on the ordinary lives of two ordinary people in this devastating moment in history .

spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the poem, this married couple, end up dying of cold and of hunger overnight and their bodies are found, kind of still embracing, still trying to keep each other warm. So it's utterly heartbreaking, but I find the opening of the poem, by evoking the presence of Dickens, this great English writer, probably the, you know, great English writer after Shakespeare in many respects, who's very, very interested in the plight of the poor and of course was alive and working during the time of the famine.

Boland is kind of reframing the sense of, okay, we're no longer looking at England's poor in the center of London, we're now kind of taking the language and the cadence of Dickens, who's so interested in the lives of people in urban London, and we're shifting it to look across the Irish Sea, at the devastation that was caused by British rule in their failure to respond to the failure of the potato crop.

I find almost the reclaiming [00:10:00] of Dickens' cadence, but changing the point of interest really fascinating, as well as that sense of scale. But Maiya, I mean, what do you think of the poem? would you like to look at?

Maiya: No,Icompletely agree with you. And actually one of the things that stands out to me most in this poem is the evocation of the husband and wife. But the absolute statement from the poet that no love poem should ever come to this threshold. That this is not a poem that can be made romantic in any way.

And whatI think is a very easy fallback in a lot of poetry when we're talking about, you know, the tension between love and violence, or the weight of history and the romance of, you know, your particular relationship and time is that it provides an offset to those things, the heavier topics. But What Boland does that is so clever in this poem is she uses the relationship as a springboard to actually demonstrate the horrors that these people were going through and then solidifies the fact that you can't then take their love and use it as an excuse to say, okay, yes, this was an awful time, [00:11:00] but people still had love. They still found joy. She specifically tells the reader, you cannot take this from the poem. There is no grace and there is no sensuality. So again, it's almost a, doubling of that sense of suffering AndI think that's so powerful in this poem.

the way it dwells on darkness and how it can cling to the individual is really beautifully laid out. But whatI find, the most really powerful about this poem is that you know, as you mentioned, Joe, you have this moment where you start with this very intimate relationship.

You have the scale and you bring in the history and all the darkness that is attached to that. So then when we shrink the scene back down again, we suddenly have the accumulation of all of those things. So your initial idea of what suffering might look like at the start is only amplified by the time we get to the end of this poem.

I think it's such a clever way to explore, the individual impact of these kind of much greater historic violences. And it's just, it's so skillful.

Joe: It's, it's incredible. [00:12:00] AndI think it's also really important for listeners to kind of get a sense of where this poem is situated in the kind of famine literature, if you will, because the idea of, Focusing on a romantic couple in the wake of the famine is a really well-established idea in Irish literary and musical life, so, listeners might be aware of the very, very iconic song, The Fields of Athenry, which is situated amidst the famine, and again, it's this pair of lovers, and one of them is sent away to Australia in exile, having stolen corn, from Trevelyan, who's the, of lord of ireland during this period and again what I think is really interesting here is that boland is very much writing in that tradition of kind of using romance and using a romantic pairing as a kind of a way in to this moment in history because it's almost hard to get a sense of the scale.

I mean, so much death, so much hardship. We need to situate individuals in order for us to kind of emotionally connect. You know, numbers ultimately become numbing after a while. And yet, in contrast to the Fields of Athenry, which is a very kind of overtly tragic [00:13:00] romance, there is a real simplicity and a real kind of Bareness to the couple in this poem and there's no sense at all that Boland is trying to elevate them They're not romantic heroes.

They are ordinariness is exactly the point

Maiya: You know, and just before we move on from this poem as well,I think it's really important to mention that one of the key through lines here is cold and how cold is portrayed cold is, you know, I've, already mentioned how that darkness is clinging darkness so often is related to shadow, obviously the absence of heat.

But we also have a reference in this poem to the freezing stars. AndI find that imagery really interesting because of course stars as we imagine them, even when we look up at the night, sky stars are big balls of plasma. They are intensely hot. You know, the sun is a star, and we have this idea in literature that the stars are a little romantic.

There's a heat, there's a passion to them. But here, the freezing stars, it just again, shows that there's no let up.I love how Boland has tried to tie in, this idea of cold to the idea of a lack of growth.

Because [00:14:00] of course we're talking about famine here. If we don't have heat, if we don't have sun, if we don't have the components that allow plants to nourish themselves to grow. All that's left is cold. know, the idea that the landscape is kind of barren, the sky is barren. It's A real sense of an atmosphere that has been left lacking. And that's such a powerful movement in this poem something thatI think you absolutely could miss on a first read, but it really does tie it into that context.

Joe: Definitely. And it's also just made me think again of the way in which this poem is in dialogue with that song, The Fields of Athenry, because in the final verse of that song, the line, um, She watched the last star falling. And this is again, as she kind of watches her beloved be taken away on a prison ship. The overt way in which the star is romanticized in that verse is so contrasted to the coldness, the kind of distantness, the lack of kind of elevation of the stars in Boland's poem, which I find really, really interesting. Now we've got to move on because we've got so much to cover, but I would just, point to final thing, which is the [00:15:00] geography in this poem, which, as Maiya mentioned in her reading.

We're talking about walking west, west and north. Now the geography of Ireland is going to be so, so important for the poetry we're going to cover in this episode. And I would really encourage listeners to look at a map of Ireland and look at the four provinces and the province in the northwest is the province of Connacht.

And this is so important because Due to that settler movement I talked about with the Catholic Irish-speaking population increasingly pushed west, Connacht became kind of this idealized place, and we're going to talk about this in our next poem as well but I would look to highlight in this poem, which again is written and published in 2001, so it's looking back at the famine, but it's also alluding to something pre-famine, it's alluding all the way back to Cromwell, because when Cromwell was in Ireland, as I said, in the mid-17th century.

He gave an ultimatum, which has become very, very famous in the country of Ireland, and I think not nearly famous enough in the way that British people are taught about Cromwell. when he was expelling and claiming the land of the population, and he was asked, well, where should they go, he said famously, to hell or to Connacht.

Meaning they can stay here and die, or they can go to Connacht, which as I [00:16:00] mentioned has lower quality land for farming, etc. So, what Boland is doing here is she's writing a poem that's very much situated in a historical context, the context of famine, which as I've said is hundreds of years after Cromwell.

And yet the roots of the conditions for the famine back even further. And this is something we're going to return to again and again in this episode. mentioned it in her intro, the weight of history. great Irish novelist James Joyce put it best in Ulysses, he said, through his character Stephen Dedalus, that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

And I think I would implore listeners to kind of bear that in mind as we go through this episode, as one of the kind central threads Irish literature and Irish art the weight of the past, both personal and kind of geopolitical. And we see that in this poem, which is, ostensibly based on a very specific historical moment while alluding to the history that prior to that moment as well.

I think it's an absolutely brilliant poem from Boland and mean I would love to do more Boland poems in this episode. I can't, we don't have time, I would suggest listeners go and check those out either on poemanalysis .com or elsewhere. So, moving forward to our next poem, [00:17:00] which is, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, which is written by arguably Ireland's greatest ever poet, William Butler Yeats.

It's written and published, in 1890. So, a sense, we've gone back in time because Boland is a much more contemporary poet than Yeats, but actually this poem is set, some years after the famine because that's when Yeats was writing. 

So I'm going to read William, but Yeats is ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. . I I I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made. Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee -loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning, to where the cricket sings. There midnights all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. sounds by the shore, While I stand on the roadway, [00:18:00] or on the pavement's grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

So, Maiya, poem, one of Yeats' most iconic. Where would you like to begin? 

Maiya: So whereIwant to start first is actually the place because Innisfree isn't, you know, a fictional place. It's very much real. It's located in county Sligo and Innisfree is well known for being an uninhabited island. Now, part of that charm and part of the peace find poem,I think is absolutely attributed to the fact that we have an uninhabited island that effectively represents a sort of rural and untouched nature that hasn't been decimated by history or politics or, society.

So that's the first placeIwant begin. , This is a real place that we're talking about and this is such a driving factor behind the way that this poem is conducted.I mean, you'll have heard from Joe's reading the sense of. inherent joy and peace. that sits quite differently,I think, to the poem we just spoke about ‘Quarantine’, because, we don't want to portray [00:19:00] that, all of the poets and the poems that we're talking about today aren't inordinately focused on suffering, but of course, suffering is the backbone to then trying to find peace.

I'm SureIsaid it in our last episode, when we talk about, pain and pleasure, you can't have one without the other because you wouldn't know what that experience felt like. So this poem is contextually built around the suffering,I would say.

But in terms of the language and the peace that we find from it,I think it's so beautiful.I mean, I really love the final stanza of this poem.I I I will arise and go now for always night and day.Ihear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore whileIstand on the roadway or on the pavement's gray. There is a sense of distance here, but the calling, the lapping of those waves and the sort of push pull of the tide,I always find that to be quite a physical pull in this poem. There's not just this sense that the speaker is an adventurer who is looking to go here to settle or to [00:20:00] explore or you know, it feels much more natural. It feels like the speaker is being pulled there by something that they can't quite put their finger on. You know, you don't get the sense in this poem that the speaker is going out of their way to make this journey. The journey isn't something that's shown as being arduous or hard, andI find that the naturalization of this journey, the fact that the speaker seems to gravitate towards this island without even really having the mechanics of having to take that journey, unlike ‘Quarantine’, you don't have the impression of the journey.

You just have an impression of the end destination. So it's a really beautiful sense of pull in this poem thatI find Yeats navigates in an almost mythic way, becauseI think part of the reasonIhad to clarify that Innisfree is a real island is because of the mythic nature of how it's portrayed in this poem. It seems like an unreal place where all you have is peace, and when of course you read this against the context of the history that we've been talking about today, that [00:21:00] seems relatively unrealistic.

It seems unlikely. SoI really love the balance between the fact that this in the speaker's eyes, a sort of mythic sanctuary. But it's also untouched and uninhabited in real life, which means that it does kind of occupy that mythic. position. you know, I know that Yeats used to holiday in county Sligo as a child. SoI can imagine that from that childlike lens when you are talking about this island with your parents where nobody lives and you're probably not allowed access to it in the same way you build up this vision of it as somewhere that is, magical in many SoI find that relationship between the real and the imagined in this poem so strong. And I'd love to unpack that relationship a little bit, Joe. So I'd love your thoughts.

Joe: Well,I think you're absolutely on the money. I think the the relationship between the past and the present, between the real and the illusory, are absolutely the core of what's going on in this poem. And I'm so glad you mentioned those kind of youthful, adventures to Sligo because this is really the key the poem was actually [00:22:00] inspired and written not in Ireland not in Sligo but in London and we get the evocation of the gray pavements in this poem and this is so so important because the one hand we can view the poem in a kind of pastoral tradition the celebration of nature over urban life the idea that You know, if you get to the country, you're closer to something kind of innate than you are in the city where you feel disconnected.

And that's all absolutely there. Space juxtaposed against a natural one. It's also urban London juxtaposed against urban London. the rural west of Ireland and again the cultural significance of the west of Ireland because of the settlers because of the the push of the catholic Irish-speaking population towards the west is so important I can't stress it enough So Yeats is kind of lonely, he's in London, he's remembering his his childhood, he's remembering his youth.

So on the one hand we've got memory here, but we've also got the rose -tinted spectacles of a beloved childhood memory, and the way in which Innisfree is portrayed as this kind [00:23:00] of idyllic place is very much tinted with those rose -tinted spectacles. But not just a personal memory that he's drawing on, he's also drawing on, as Maiya mentioned, a kind of evocation of Ireland's mythic past.

The further west you go, the further you are from British rule the further you are from roman influence the more authentically Irish or Gaelic or celtic you can become and find and this theme of on the west of ireland as a place where you can find the quote-unquote true Irish experience is something that through Irish art to this day. I mean, this poem, as I mentioned, written in 1890, the Lake Isle of Innisfree, and I'm so glad Maiya clarified that this is a real island, because think about the tradition that this has sparked, There is a wonderful play that I went to see a few years ago, an Irish play called The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which is set on one of the Aran Islands, which is situated to the west of Ireland.

Many of you listeners might not have heard of that play, but I'm sure many of them will have heard of the recent film, The Banshees of Inisherin, which again takes place on an island to the west of Ireland. The idea that the further west you go, the more authentically [00:24:00] Irish you find. William Butler Yeats's brother, Jack, was a painter who was very famous for painting the landscapes of the west of Ireland, this desire to kind of create something distinctly Irish.

Crucially, based on those other Inish places that I've mentioned, Innisfree, in this poem, is real. Inishmore, in the play, is real. But Inisherin is not a real island. It is an invention. This idea that are kind of fictionalising real places to the point where you might as well just invent a fictional Irish island because no one's going to know the difference, the names are all very similar and you can play as the filmmakers were with the notion of is this a real history or a constructed mythology?

And Yeats is absolutely at the core of that question. Thank you. really important context to understand for this poem is the Celtic revival. So at the end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century, Ireland is a country that is increasingly, looking to establish itself, looking to kind of more autonomy, and the ways in which that happened were conflicted and contested.

There was a political movement to aim for a home rule parliament, because at the time Ireland was ruled from the British parliament. There was a more radical view with the Irish Republican Brotherhood who [00:25:00] wanted a violent revolution, and we shall come to that in our next poem. On the cultural side of things, Yeats is at the core of this thing we call the Celtic Revival which was a movement in poetry, in theatre, in Ireland that sought to create an Irish literary canon distinct from the British, distinct from other literary canons and it was about Irish mythology, Irish landscapes, Irish voices, Irish stories and Yeats is kind of the ultimate myth maker of Irish literature.

Ireland in this period because he's drawing on old myths. He's also drawing on the Catholic tradition. he's also drawing on the Christian tradition. He's drawing on pre Christian pagan mythology, and he is looking to kind of create a vision of what Ireland is as a literary creation. And inevitably, this is the way the history goes, the literary, the artistic, and the historical become blurred and become blended.

Modern Ireland is not a single unified nation, because Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, whereas the Republic of Ireland is its own independent nation. But what it means to belong to this landmass, so much of it is filtered through [00:26:00] Yeats's idea of Ireland, Yeats's language, and this obsession with going west to find something more authentic than you would find in the east, which is more anglicised.

Maiya: I also don't want listeners to take away from the fact that though this poem on the surface may seem like it's overly focused on nature and the sort of romanticization of that. Because actually, one of the things that we probably should have mentioned at the top of analyzing this poem is that, what Innisfree stands for is Heather Island.

And now Heather is a plant that is well known for surviving in really awful conditions. It can grow in harsh, rocky environments. so, you know, it's such a testament to what the Irish people had to endure. You know, the history that we're talking about today, that Heather is a symbol of that endurance as well. So not only have we mythologized the actual landscape, but the flower that it's named for is a symbol of that endurance as well.

It's just such a, concise tie in thatI think really important [00:27:00] as you navigate this poem to, to keep that in mind really.

Joe: So, moving forwards to our next poem, which is, one of the most iconic literary creations of all time. It's Easter 1916, sticking with William Butler Yeats. I'm not going to read the entire poem because it's slightly longer than the others, but I'm just going to read the final stanza. And before I do that, I'm going to explain a little bit about the title signifies, because as regular listeners will know, we love titles on Beyond the Verse.

So, Mentioned there was this sense of Ireland kind of ill at ease with its own identity as part of the United Kingdom as it was during this period. which came to a head, on Easter in 1916, so the middle of the First World War, and the First World War had exacerbated, many of the nationalist sentiments that were already bubbling under the surface, and there was, an insurrection known as the Easter Rising, which took place in Dublin Easter in 1916.

Militarily, politically, it was a complete failure. They seized, among other things, the GPO, the General Post Office, they set up a trench in St. Stephen's Green, the famous park in the centre of Dublin, and... sort of odd historical tidbit, they seized, very iconically, the GPO, the General Post [00:28:00] Office.

Obviously, the significance of Easter is not a coincidence, and many of the people involved were aware of the fact that success was unlikely. there was a sense to which they knew they couldn't succeed militarily, but they were going to inspire something greater in their declaration, which ultimately, you know, we're going to explore did go on to happen.

And there is a sense that the brutality with which the leaders of this execution were executed by the British state, ultimately changed something, even though the, the mass, population of Ireland didn't support the uprising at the time, largely because there were Irish soldiers fighting with the British Army in the First World War, and there was the idea that this was not the time, was not an appropriate moment to against British rule.

But the way in which they were later executed did sort of radicalise the Irish population, and it's only three years before the Irish War of Independence. So, the Easter Rising of 1916, despite not being the revolution that ultimately achieves independence for much of Ireland, Is still kind of in the romantic tradition in the way the story is told viewed as this moment of heroism Now Yeats was obviously alive during [00:29:00] this period.

He was a key writer at the time wrote this poem in september of that year. So have this almost immediate response to history as it's happening just retains this sense of immediacy, having been written just a few months after the Easter Rising.

And I shall just read last stanza. Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. Oh, when may it suffice? That is Heaven's part, our part, To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child, When sleep at last has come. On limbs that had run wild, what is it but nightfall? No, no, not night, but death.

Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith for all that is done and said. We know their dream, enough to know they dreamed and are dead. And what if excess of love bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse. McDonagh and McBride and Connolly and Pearse, now and in time to be, [00:30:00] wherever green is worn, changed utterly.

A terrible beauty is born. And those final few lines in particular, this notion of change, this notion of that has irreversibly happened. so key to this idea of the rising and the space it occupies in the Irish literary tradition. But Maiya, is there anything in that stanza that you think you'd like to listeners' attention to?

Maiya: Yeah.I really want to explore on balance the exploration of heroism here. Whether these people should be made into martyrs, whether they should be heroes, or whether the need of their deaths, and the fact that, you know, you get the impression that not much has been achieved in this poem should undermine that because of course, this is an elegy of sorts.

We have direct names, some of the people that are, are named in this poem were also poets. They were writers, they were people who, chronicled in the same way that Yeats did. So It's very interesting that this poem, doesn't uplift those voices.

I think in the same way that you would [00:31:00] expect from a traditional elegy. This is more of a questioning of sorts. And actually, I,Iwanted to refer back just a little bit to the prior Stan, although it is mentioned at the top of this, Stan, the symbolism of the stone versus the more natural elements of this poem, because a stone in itself carries quite a strong literary weight. It's something rigid, immovable. It's something that stands the test of time. It lasts forever. And hereI find that Yeats here uses the symbolism of the stone as a sort of stand in for these revolutionaries, because again, the question is asked. Are these revolutionaries going to stand the test of time? Are these names going to be remembered forever? Is this something that is the start of a much longer battle against injustice? Or is the rigidity and the solidity of this thing, the idea stronger than the actual outcome? and the way that these stones in this poem stand against the slightly more mutable elements of the poem, you know, you have the clouds, the streams, the birds that range from [00:32:00] cloud to tumbling cloud. You have this innate sense of kind of softer movement, and it's really strongly set against these more, rigid and immovable elements of the poem. You know, in a strange sense, not really sure whereIsit with this poem. I'm left with questions and I'm curious to know from your side, Joe, is there something that you pick out of that that gives you an answer or are we left answerless.

Joe: It's a great question andI think that the key here is the date at which this poem was written. You Know, Yeats couldn't have known. This was, poem was written after the uprising, but before Irish independence. So, he is kind of projecting into the future about the futility or heroism of this act, because ultimately that will be determined not by the act itself, but by future by what this inspires or fails to inspire I think that sense of ambiguity that sense of Something has changed, we don't know what it is I mean a terrible beauty is born that oxymoron that ends the poem He is aware of the fact that this is a seismic moment in history But relevance of that event the consequences that we're going [00:33:00] to have are unclear to him

Maiya: You know, actually as you were speaking then,I was never quite sure of those few lines where mentions as a mother names her child when sleep at last has come.I was always unsure of what those lines stood for, but actually it really links into what you were just saying then, which is that, you can name something before it's time.

You know, this idea of the mother naming her child only when sleep has come, it offers a sort of window where she's unsure whether that child will survive maybe, and maybe this is extrapolated across the cause because of course you can name something as important before you receive the final result, but actually maybe the waiting period. Is being anticipated in this poem. I'd never thought about it until, until you just mentioned it, so it's a really interesting one.

Joe: It's,I mean, it's a fascinating poem. We could have dedicated a whole episode to this, and I would at this point direct listeners' attention to the episode we did on William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming. I think way back in season one, remains one of my absolute favourite episodes. I just think it's such a masterpiece. I'd also like to draw a connection between [00:34:00] those two poems, because we have this issue of birth that ends both poems. In this poem, a terrible beauty is born, and the second coming ends with the lines, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

So, this notion of into the world, something has to happen, a border has been crossed that cannot then be returned you cannot be unborn once you have been born and clearly on Yeats's mind these poems are written about three years apart so that symbolism that notion that something is changing and this isn't just about Irish independence of course Yeats is also writing this in the wake of the first world war in the wake of the birth of literary modernism there's all kinds of interpretations about what is this thing that is being born into the world but the Irish independence line is absolutely crucial particularly in eastern 1916 The thing I would like to focus on, and again, because this is a poem about Irish history. So the prominence of Christian imagery is so, so important here. In the Second Coming we have the invocation of Bethlehem, which obviously refers to the birth of Christ, [00:35:00] whereas Easter 1916, the significance of that is about the death and, of course, rebirth of Christ. And again, what I would look to remind listeners of is that Yeats is constructing Irish canon in its own image, an image that he is projecting a version of Ireland that he would like to see exist in the world. And this notion of Ireland itself being reborn as a nation is so important because some years after this poem is written, so the kind of landmass that we now think of as the Republic of Ireland became the Irish Free State in 1922. So this is a relatively young country in the grand scheme of things as an independent nation. What Yeats is looking to do is looking to cast this moment in history, this period of time, as the rebirth of a nation rather than the kind of the creation of a nation because he is looking to draw a connection between the nation that will go on to become the Irish Free State.

What we now know as the Republic of Ireland. He is looking to cast that in the same light as this kind of mythic island of the past. Which, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, was never a unified country. But this [00:36:00] attempt from Yeats to draw connections between them, I mean, it's a masterpiece of a poem, and I would implore listeners to read more about it on PoemAnalysis.com, but also to go and listen to that episode we did on the second coming, because it's one of my all-time favourites.

Maiya: To move us forward in time a little bit, we're going to move on to Patrick Kavanagh's on Raglan Road. Now this poem is a little bit different from the ones we've discussed so far because instead of being solely rural, we have a sense of real location here we have Dublin locations that are listed in the poem on Raglan Road being one them.

So I'll read it and then Jo, I'd love to throw to you for your thoughts. So this is on Raglan Road, on Raglan Road, on an autumn day.Imet her first and knew that her dark hair would weave a snare I might day rue.Isaw the danger. Yes,Iwalked along the enchanted way andIsaid let be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day. Grafton Street in November, we tripped lightly along the ledge of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's [00:37:00] pledge the queen of heart still making andInot making hay. Oh,Ilove too by such and such is happiness thrown away.Igave her gifts of the mind.Igave her the secret sign that's known to the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone and word and tint.

did not stint, for I gave her poems to say with her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May on a quiet street where old ghosts meet.Isee her walking now away from me. So hurriedly, my reason must allow that Ihad wooed, not asIshould, creature made of clay. When the angel woos the clay, he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day. Now, Joe, there are so many points that we could start with this poem, but I think let's start with that first stanza. What stands out to you?

Joe: Yeah, so this first stanza, I mean, it's so interesting So Patrick Kavanagh was living in dublin at this time.

Uh, he was living in a boarding house on raglan road So very appropriate. This is a an [00:38:00] everyday setting for him, but he's actually born outside of dublin so he's a rural poet come to the big city and there is this sense of longing and the way in which he uses natural imagery throughout the poem despite it being situated in the city I think is really curious but think I'd like to start with the kind of portrayal of the seasons in this first stanza Kavanaugh specifies that this is an autumn day I first Now, the reason I think that's really interesting is because what we have there is a tension set up immediately, and this poem thrives on tension throughout.

The tension of a first meeting, which we might associate with the season of spring, of growth, of, of newness, and yet this is cast in autumn, the leaves are falling, there is a sense of decline already. So what Kavanaugh is doing there, as early as the first stanza, is establishing the doomed nature of this relationship.

This is an unrequited love. This is a poem in which that love is never truly consummated, that love is never truly realized. And by framing, the beginning of something with the ending of something the opening stanza, he kind of establishes the tragic arc of the poem itself.

Maiya: I'd actually really like to pick up Joe on [00:39:00] that impression of endings and beginnings that you spoke about. Some of the standout lines in this poem to me are actually the closing two lines. that I had wooed not as I should, a creature made of clay when the angel woos the clay, he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day. Now, Kavanaugh was a Catholic poet, andI fundamentally believed that this creature made of clay is a reference to the Bible In Genesis two, seven, it stated that God created the first humans outta the dust of the earth. Now the dust of the earth,I think we can absolutely refer to as kind of the clay of the earth Now. This brings up two really important questions, one of which is creation and the ability of the speaker to sort of mold this lover, this person that he's been pursuing. And the second thing it brings up is the impression of the endings we have. Because to bring a creation story into a poem that is on the whole, focused on the anxiety and the fear around the way that this relationship might [00:40:00] end, is a real offset to the more romantic tones that we might get.

You know, the way that this lover is described is kind of consistently dangerous throughout the hair snare dynamic in the first stanza kind of invokes the feeling of being hunted, like being caught in a snare. But of course, when you're talking about a romance, there's a freedom that should be accompanied with that, and it's not present here. So even thoughI would say for the majority of this poem, the lover is portrayed as the one that offers the danger in the final Stan.

Instead, we have the impression that the speaker is the one who created this formation, is the one who held the power. And it absolutely makes you rethink the first three stanzas of the poem because you see it as a very different relationship when you change the power dynamic instead of being chased by something attractive, something Roman romantic. There's a different power play that makes it a little bit more unsettling, which again, feeds into that fear and anxiety thatI was mentioning. SoI think this is a poem [00:41:00] that you have to read a few times to really get into the bones of, and the second point on, you know, endings and beginnings in this poem,I find it really fascinating to compare a creation story with so many references to endings, because creation is something that has, throughout literature being revered as this huge moment creation is joyous.

It's something that brings life. And yet here we have a creature losing its wings. We have old ghosts, we have fallen leaves. So all of these small symbols that represent death and autumn and the passing of time really sit at odds to this idea of creation.

AndIwonder what the purpose of that in this poem is

Joe: What's a fascinating question.I think the presence of ghosts in that final stanza has always kind of really stuck with me. Because I think, and one of the reasons I wanted to choose this poem is because I think it speaks to so many of the themes that we've covered in today's episode and we're going to continue covering.

Thank you. The sense that there is an innate sense of longing contained within Irish [00:42:00] art and a kind of sense of melancholia that I think pervades the Irish cultural experience. And so much of it in this poem. idea that the person you used to love and the younger version of yourself have become ghosts.

I mean, it's plural. It's not just that she is a ghost. He himself, the speaker, casts his own former self as a ghost. Obviously, a very simplistic reading is that ghosts haunt people. And here, the ghosts are not actually deceased. It is the ghosts of the past. So the past haunts the present. And Kavanaugh is tapping into something so universal in Irish literature about that sense of the past.

I mentioned the, the, the, the, the, the, the, James Joyce quote earlier on, I won't repeat it, but the idea that The weight of the past constantly interrupts our experience of the present and that applies to both national past, you know big events like the famine Cromwell's invasion, but it also applies people's personal experience of the past.

The fact that you have loved and lost haunts your ability to love someone else, to move [00:43:00] on. And that for me is so reminiscent of the Irish literary landscape that I think I really wanted to include it. And the other reason wanted to include it is that many people might not realize that this is a poem at all, because some of our listeners might be more familiar with On Raglan Road.

The song, it was set to music by Luke Kelly in the 20th century. And it was set to the tune of the traditional Irish language song, which is translated as the dawning of the day, which obviously that lyric also appears in the poem. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because the relationship between Different aspects of Irish life are so permeable.

So we talked about Yeats earlier on as this great writer of Irish cultural life. Yeats went on to serve as a senator in the Irish Free State. So the blending of the literary and the political is really prominent. The blending of the literary and the musical in the form of this poem, which is now better known as a song.

There is such a kind of of Irish creative expression in Irish national expression that two [00:44:00] draw kind of hard lines between them would be to miss the point. I mean the most recent president but one of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, last year released a book of poems. This is a country where music, the poetry, the political are all kind of interconnected.

The Fields of Athenry, that song I mentioned earlier on, is very regularly sung at sporting events, so sport comes into this. It's going to come into it again with our final poem of today's episode, The Artane Band. So there are so many. different ways in which Irish cultural life intersects with itself, and I think this poem is a really good way of looking at that.

Maiya: For any listeners who have made it this far into the episode will have realized that one of the things that we keep touching on is repetition the haunting of the past on the present, the repeated cycles of violence or history and culture. It's so important, and nothing summarizes this better than the bog. the bog. is a symbol that recurs throughout Irish literature and poetry. AndI would love to move [00:45:00] on to Bogland, which is an amazing poem by Seamus Heaney. And earlier this season, we actually have already touched on the imagery of the bog, which, you know, is somethingInever would've expected to say within a two episode arc. But the bog is a symbol in Ireland.

The peat bog has this incredible ability to preserve things that have been sunk in it. Heaney is really well known actually for writing poems about, what are now termed as bog bodies, bog bodies being bodies that have been uncovered from peat bogs. One of the really famous examples is the Tollund Man, which was body uncovered in Scandinavia from a peat bog was over 2000 years old.

And it is almost perfectly preserved to the point where people have been able to pick out, you know, how the body died, specific preservation tactics. It's a really interesting topic, andI know if we had time we would really go into this and it was something Joe talks about, um, a few episodes ago when we were talking about the way that the bog is able to preserve and repeat history.

Because when bodies are found from it, a [00:46:00] lot of the time people will call the police rather than calling, you know, excavators for example. And Ireland has a lot of these peat bogs. The peat bog something that is going to recur in a lot of imagery SoI want to note to listeners before we go into this poem, that one, that imagery is really important.

And two, The idea of preservation of culture, of history, of violence, but also the repetition of it as we start to dredge up these pasts is really critical. Now I'll read the poem and then Joe, I'm gonna let you start with the poem however you want. So this is Bogland by Seamus Heaney. We have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere the eye concedes to in Crouching Horizon is wooed into the cyclops eye of a town. Our unfenced country is a bog that keeps crusting between the sight of the sun. They've taken the skeleton of the great Irish elk outta the peat, set it up. An astounding crates [00:47:00] full of air butter sunk under More than a hundred years was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind black butter melting and opening underfoot, missing its last definition by millions of years. They'll never dig coal here. Only the waterlogged trunks of great firs soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip seems camped on before the bog holes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet center is bottomless. Now, Joe, I'm gonna hand straight over to you.

Joe: My goodness. There is so much we could do and we haven't got time for all of it but... dig in. The first thing I would look to listeners attention to is a juxtaposition between breadth and depth in this poem. So the poem begins with the kind of evocation of a distinctly American landscape, the prairies, the wide open terrain, and he says very clearly, very plainly, we don't have that.

That's not the Irish experience. It's not about kind [00:48:00] of constantly moving outwards and filling these great expansive places. The Irish landscape, and by extension the kind of what the bog represents, which is the Irish kind of cultural inheritance, doesn't go broad. It goes incredibly deep, and that word bottomless we get at the end of the poem.

This is about digging into the past, but this is also about how can't always control when the past is returns to the surface you don't always have agency over what the bog is going to kind of throw up and this sense of the bog as a repository of memory some of it deliberately hidden some of it lost but always with the potential of rearing its head again in the present is such an enduring metaphor for Irish history Irish politics So this poem was written and published in 1969, right at the beginning of the conflict we now know as the Troubles, which spanned from the late 60s to the late 90s.

incredibly bloody violent period of sectarian violence largely in Northern Ireland but other parts of the [00:49:00] United Kingdom as well between nationalist forces, unionist forces, paramilitaries, the British military and we don't have time to do the full history of the Troubles but you know I would suggest anybody goes and reads a bit more about it if they want to understand both this poem and the next one we're going to talk about in the episode but Heaney is writing this poem right at the beginning of that and yet this poem is so kind of aware of the way in which old grievances, I mean like I said at the beginning of the episode, we can trace a lot of this back to 1170.

So, almost 800 years to the year that Heaney is writing this poem, the first British rulers arrive in Ireland. We can go back to Cromwell and the settler movement and the way in which that affects the sort of demography of Ireland, where the Catholics were, where the Protestants were, where that sectarian violence later sprung up in the 20th century.

We can go back to the famine and the kind of long -standing grievances of Irish nationalists against Britain. So there's so many layers here and the bog is the representation of how those layers can [00:50:00] be thrown up unexpectedly. Maiya mentioned the discovery of bodies. A lot of those bodies are ancient bodies that were lost or just died in the bog.

I mean I was reading short story the other day, Frank O’Connor’s ‘Guests of the Nation’, in which Irish Republican forces during the War of Independence in 1919 deliberately bury the bodies of British soldiers in the bog. So the bog is simultaneously this place that there are ancient, ancient lost things, objects, people, bodies, but also the place you go to hide what you're ashamed of.

You bury the bodies there because an easy place to get rid of something that you don't think people will go looking for it. the bog is this incredibly complex metaphor in this poem. And what I love about Heaney is able to do he's able to cast it as something essential to the Irish experience while kind of acknowledging the fact that it's this of stinking uninspiring that nobody wants to go anywhere near.

I love that reference to they'll never dig coal here, the waterlogged trunks of [00:51:00] great firs. There is nothing of financial value necessarily to be gleaned from this place but its cultural value to the nation its historical value is kind of unparalleled

So, like I said, this poem is published right at the beginning of the period known as the Troubles. I want to now move forward to a poem much later in the Troubles. It was first published in 1994, just several weeks after a ceasefire had been agreed with the Irish Republican Army, the IRA.

is a poem by one of my favourite poets of all time, Michael Longley, Northern Irish poet, contemporary of Heaney, friend of Heaney's, phenomenal writer, passed away recently, and this poem is titled Ceasefire, and I'll read it now. in mind of his own father and moved to tears, Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and wept with him until their sadness filled the building.

Taking Hector's corpse into his own hands, Achilles made sure it was washed and, for the old king's sake, [00:52:00] laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry, wrapped like a present, home to Troy at daybreak. When they had eaten together, it pleased them both to stare at each other's beauty as lovers might, Achilles built like a god, Priam good -looking still and full of conversation.

who earlier had sighed. I get down on my knees and do what must be done and kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son. So this is one of my favorite poems of all time I mentioned it was published just after an IRA ceasefire in 1994 and that ceasefire did not hold. for anyone who might have already guessed, this poem is a classical retelling of a scene that occurs in the Iliad, where Achilles, the kind of Greek hero, gives the body of the Trojan hero Hector back to Hector's father Priam, who comes to Achilles' tent to beg for the body.

It's this incredibly moving passage in the Iliad, and Longley, like many Irish poets in this era, chose to go back to ancient Greece to look for inspiration for [00:53:00] their poems and I'm really curious about why this is because listeners might think this is a strange choice we're talking about Irish poetry here but I think this poem really captures something about its contemporary moment in Ireland, the height of the troubles, mid -1990s, peace feels within reach and yet ultimately is not achieved for another four years.

Maiya, I'm curious as to why you think chose to go back in time into the distant past and a non -Irish past look for a way of framing his contemporary moment. 

Maiya: It's a really good question.I think part of me wants to say that we have such a rich collection of stories and mythologies from the Greek canon, and because it was so long ago, chronologically speaking, I think it might be easier in some ways for it to not carry the same weight of trauma that perhaps more recent histories do. We've spoken a lot about how much of the Irish poetry in today's episode and and beyond refers to kind of Celtic [00:54:00] tradition or slightly more recent histories in that sense. And of course those mythologies are important, but they are still marked with a legacy of colonial violence in many ways.

There have been so many moments in Irish history thatI think are too charged even now to refer to.

And this moment is a moment of humanity. It's a moment of hope. We're talking about a poem that is written. After years of suffering for that small spark to think that this might be the end. So to call back to such a historic moment,I mean, this is, as you say, one of the most moving passages, in the Iliad. And because it contrasts the absolute brutality of war and suffering against the individual plight of a father who just wants to mourn his son. It's as simple as that. There is no consideration for the war that is happening around them. It's very much focused on the individual.

AndI think what long is, so adept at doing is navigating the individual impact of the trauma of the years that have gone [00:55:00] past. You know, we've talked through this episode about. Multiple moments in time where suffering has kind of been the default. And here that spark of hope,I think ties really well into a Greek mythology because when we talk about Greek mythology, in the most part, we're talking about heroes. We're talking about these grand stories, these epics, and to cement the Irish canon as being something akin to the epic story of a Greek hero, a Greek God, is such a significant way of saying this is important, of cementing that history in poetry, of cementing that history in a poetic form and paralleling it to something that had such a huge moment.

I mean, the Trojan War is one. if not the most famous Greek mythological war.I think most people would know what the Trojan War was if you asked them on the street. so, not only does this poem rekindle the cultural memory of that moment, but [00:56:00] it also interweaves that moment into the present day. AndI think that's so skillful. It's so subtle because of course you could take this poem as just a retelling, but when you apply that context, it's impossible to ignore.

Joe: I think that's absolutely right. AndI think just building on that there's kind of two things I'd look to focus on before we move on. The first is me there's only a single word in this poem actually us back to the present or long least present in the mid 90s and it's the word uniform. appears in the second stanza, because that word is anachronistic in the context of, the Iliad.

It would have been armour or a tunic. And that word, I think, is a clear reminder, it's the only word in the poem that tells us actually, yes, this is ostensibly looking back into the far distant past, even into things that never occurred. We don't know the or Priam or Hector ever existed. Eddie Young is talking about death, not about young men unifying Ireland.

We're actually talking about young men dying today in uniform.

The second thing I'd like to focus on is [00:57:00] building what Maiya was just talking about is this literary concept called defamiliarization, which was first put forward by the critic Viktor Shklovsky in 1917. And effectively it's the idea that you can make the familiar seem unfamiliar in order to and what that means in this context is, in Longley is writing after 25 years of brutal sectarian conflict between unionists and nationalists. People are so dug in, and, you know, we're all aware of the world we live in today, and, you know, the debates that happen about conflicts around the world. It's very easy for people to, you know, get involved. Pick a side, and sometimes those sides are picked for good reasons, historical reasons, family reasons, sometimes they're picked for bad reasons, but once you've picked a side, you end up defending things, and then you defend a little more, and you defend a little more, until ultimately people become so entrenched, I mean we're so familiar with this in the modern world, I'm sure I don't even need to spell the contemporary conflicts in which this has been a factor, people become so entrenched on their different sides, that It's impossible to have [00:58:00] a conversation without people getting defensive, without people becoming tribal or sectarian. What defamiliarization allows Longley to do is look beyond the nationalists and the unionists. This isn't a conflict between Irish nationalists and unionists or the IRA and the British military. This is about ancient This is about Troy. And therefore you kind of lift the weight of loyalty off of the shoulders of readers.

You allow them to look at these people as human beings, not as the enemy. And it's such a subtle thing, but I find that in order to write about his contemporary moment, he had to go far away, otherwise people would get too defensive and too entrenched in their existing views. it's a piece of poetic genius and I love this poem because of it.

Maiya: absolutely, , AndI really enjoy that this poem offers balance because it's something thatI think must have been incredibly hard to do, given how he was writing at the time, because for any listeners who don't have the poem in front of them, what's worth pointing out final stanza of this [00:59:00] poem is actually direct speech. The rest of the poem isn't direct speech. It's a retelling, but the final two lines are, and they sit in direct contrast to the first stanza of the poem. In the first stanza. We understand that Priam, the father of Hector, is curled up at Achilles feet and weeping. We have this image of a man completely broken by the grief that he's enduring, and yet the final two lines of the poem suggests that Priam has just had to do what he had to do in order to get his son back. That maybe there was a question of whether that was. Act to a certain extent or whether it was the complete truth. He says,I get down on my knees and do what must be done and kiss Achilles hand the killer of my son. the final line reminds us again, we're talking about the past repeating.

It reminds us that Achilles was the killer of Hector. So regardless of everything that has happened within this poem and the forgiveness that is implied, the question is asked, is [01:00:00] the forgiveness that is displayed in this poem really the truth or is it a concession in order to reach some form of peace? And that's a wonderful question to leave the reader with because you don't have an answer for that. You have these two contrasting sides. And yet you don't feel as if you are fully entrenched in either, you don't have a foot in either camp. You are simply an observer of this. So the weight of that question is left with you as a reader.

And But again, heaviness in the sense that it feels epic in scale even though it's only four stands as long.

Joe: I couldn't agree more on the, the focus on those last two lines is so interesting because on the one hand you're right there is this about the authenticity of this forgiveness but there's also the reminder that Longley is leaving us with that the only people it is possible to make peace with are your enemies.

In order for there to be resolution to this conflict and any conflict, people who don't like each other will have to forgive. People, you have to meet the enemy where they are. You have to make peace with the people who wish to do you harm, otherwise [01:01:00] there is no lasting peace. The final thing I would like to look at in this poem before we move on fact that Longley has flipped the chronology.

Those last two lines are actually the first thing that Priam does upon entering the tent. The first thing that Priam does upon entering the tent. the Iliad and yet in this poem Longley finishes with that and I think it is so interesting because he begins the poem with what's happened after the two men had this embrace where Priam kisses his hands they eat together come to a resolution they begin to understand one another after and years of conflict only then Longley give us the thing that was necessary to get to that point of understanding.

And I think by giving the reader initially the hope outlining necessary steps that they must undertake in order to reach it. He's laying down an opportunity to the reader. showing them what they can have he's also reminding them at the end that in order to achieve this you are going to have to do something immense you are going to have to make a statement [01:02:00] is difficult as anything you've ever been called upon to do you will have to metaphorically or literally in this case kiss the hands of your enemy kiss the hands of the man who killed your son and it's I mean it's a wonderful wonderful poem I said to listeners earlier I suggest you read lots more michael Longley because he is wonderful now I promise we come now to our final poem And I wanted to look at this one much more contemporary.

It was published in 2017 for the first time and it's The Artane Band by Jessica Traynor. Now obviously it's very recently published so we can't read the whole thing because it's not out of copyright but think I'd like to just explain a little bit about what's going on in this poem before I read a section of it which is that it's a description of a kind of childhood memory of being at Croke Park watching a sporting event.

Croke Park, this incredibly iconic Irish stadium in Dublin, we'll come back to that in a moment. And This band is playing from the Artane School of Music, and is writer reflecting on the fact that there was a historic instances of child abuse at this school and the kind of [01:03:00] twisted way in which people are kind of aware of what was going on, but not aware of the extent of it and what the experience of watching these, these children play in the band kind of the memories it calls up.

Jessica Traynor herself said in an interview with an Irish newspaper that the poem was inspired after a conversation with her father they had after 756 children's bodies were found buried in a cistern in a mother and baby home in Tuam, and the context of this I think is really important because we're talking about the Republic of Ireland, first achieved independence, as I've said earlier, in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and later the Republic of Ireland , and a country that so many people in the world feel they know so well, Irish diaspora around the world is so vast, I count myself among it, and there are millions and millions more people who identify as Irish outside of Ireland than there are people who live in Ireland.

So much of the last sort of 20 years has been about re -interrogating first decades and the first kind of century of what this nation is. Ireland was a very, very poor country until sort of the mid -90s and then there was a period known as [01:04:00] the Celtic Tiger from about 1995 to about 2007. The Celtic Tiger from about 1995 to about 2007.

In which Ireland went from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to being a thriving economy. Subsequent to that, obviously the economic crash that affected people all over the world. but in Ireland, the main way in which that's really important to this day is there's a housing crisis.

There is a sense that Ireland is a country that on the one hand has done really well and yet is also kind of blighted by inequality. obviously there has been a big shift against more rigid Catholicism in Ireland and women's rights were slower to be achieved than they were in other European nations.

So it is a country that is interrogating its own past all the time. It is a young country, the Republic of Ireland, in many senses. And The Artane Band this poem I find is Jessica Traynor her view back into the past and looking at what kind of a nation she is living in what still needs to be interrogated? We've talked so much in this episode about things buried in the ground and we mean that in a literal sense Like these 756 children like the bodies found in the bog But we also mean in a cultural and historic sense how [01:05:00] much of the islands that we claim inheritance to is real How much is invented how much do we leave behind and how much do we carry with us?

these are all questions that are being explored in this poem i'd just like to read I think the last of stanzas and I imagined myself out there with them in this rainy coliseum with my dad as emperor giving the thumbs down shaking his head for the loss of his son to that criminal gang the bold boys of The Artane Band and I throw to Maiya and whether she has any thoughts on those lines or or other lines in the poem I i'd like to stress how much is going on in this very short extract that I've read.

The reference to Croke Park as a coliseum, as a kind of epic amphitheatre, is on the one hand a call back to ancient Rome and a way of elevating Croke Park, but it's also, as we've said so many times in this episode, an evocation of bloody Irish history. A coliseum is a scene of blood as well as, endeavours, and in [01:06:00] the Irish context this is really, really prevalent because in the 1920, was an event known as Bloody Sunday in which, the British military shot dead, multiple civilians in Croke Park who were watching a GAA game, which is an Irish sport.

And I think the setting of this poem is really, really important. The fact that not even the issue that Jessica Traynor is writing about in this poem. It's simply background. It's simply the weight of history. the periphery of her poetic vision rather than its central focal point.

Maiya, what do you think about this poem, as a place to finish?

Maiya: well,Idon't think we could have picked a better poem to finish on. I'd actually really like to stay on the imagery of the Colosseum for a moment because one thingI think we can dwell on is the fact that yes, the Colosseum has rich history. A traumatic history of violence, but it was often conveyed as performance. Now The Artane Band, the Artane School for Boys, had a reputation for taking in boys who had troubled backgrounds, who maybe were violent, who were acting out, taking them and trying to effectively [01:07:00] reform them.

So it was a, a behavioral corrective school, and this band would be marched out during these big games and they would play this great music. It would liven people up. But of course, this is a performance and a cover for the later understanding that these children were not just being rehabilitated, but they were being abused.

So again, we have this relationship between performance and violence and the way that histories can be hidden by individuals. SoI really, you know, hesitate to say I enjoy this poem becauseI think it's a. It's a very heavy poem to sit with, butI do find the way that Traynor manages to navigate the complexity of that relationship, the sense of performance and gravity of celebratory music as set against the history that we have that is so traumatic, really brilliant.

I mean, just from a language perspective,I think it's,I think it's wonderful. ButI do also really want to pick out from that penultimate stanza, the fact that she, as the speaker [01:08:00] is imagining herself with them, there is a self interrogation that happens with this poem where behavior is something that really crops up.

Because I,Iread an interview with Traynor and that. This school was actually a regular threat for children. It's that if they were misbehaving, the threat was, oh, we'll send you the Artane school. We'll send you over there. So it was a well-known thing that this was a, school that focused on behavioral correction. But the fact that we're taking a childhood threat that really exists,I think, within the realms of your home. It's a domestic setting, but then repositioning that into something that has been lauded as this huge spectacle, this giant Colosseum where everyone can see there's something private about being domestic, but you are in a public space here. That is also a huge change. So the fact that she's positioning herself among these boys in a public setting is one thing because it's absolutely interrogating what misbehavior looks like on a kind of more public scale, but also she casts herself as one of the boys.

So there's a [01:09:00] gender interrogation that happens andIwonder what the impact of having a female poet, a female speaker. assimilated in with the boys of this poem who in many ways represent a sort of violence whereI think the female character tends to represent a domesticity so mean, Joe, I'm curious on your thoughts on the relationship between gender in this poem as well, because of course we have a young daughter and her father, so there's a family dynamic at play here as well.

Joe: For me, it all lies in that final line, the bold boys of The Artane Band, and that line is in italics. for me, this is evoking, the very famous and very controversial Irish nationalist song, The Boys of the Old Brigade, which is a song that is still sung, at Celtic football games, for example.

It's an Irish nationalist song about a kind of memory of joining the IRA, and it's a very controversial song, and there's been legal cases about whether or not it should be allowed to be sung at sporting occasions. And think what Traynor is doing here by implying an affinity between the [01:10:00] experience of these boys and the boys of this iconic IRA song is interrogating the fact that so much of the mythology of Irish life has been written by and for and about the male experience.

I mentioned earlier on before we read this poem about how, Ireland was much, Later, with regard to lots of, rights for women than, you know, other European countries and, that by casting herself as a boy and by blurring the distinction between the male experience of the boys in the band the IRA, it's a comment on how dominated Irish history is by male figures and how female figures often been pushed under the surface, have been, neglected both in their moment and in the art that reflects their moment.

And I think, know, that's one of the reasons I wanted to finish on this poem because... What I would stress to listeners is that done this episode on poetry and I hope you've all really enjoyed it and found it useful and I'd love to get Maiya's thoughts before we finish on if anything, draws these poems together.

What kind of thematic links can we spot? But thing I would stress is that [01:11:00] this is a country that is still understanding its history, that is still interrogating its history, talked so much about how past infiltrates the present these writers, but what I think we're seeing the moment with so many writers in the present in Ireland is that they are looking to interrogate the past more explicitly and that boundary I think is ultimately that possibly the defining characteristic of these poems is the blurring between different aspects of Irish life, be it geography, politics, music, art, history, religion, paganism.

There is a kind of melting pot of cultural influence that, much like the bog, kind of regurgitates itself in unexpected and strange ways.

Maiya: I think that's a perfect way to put it. and actually to maybe answer your question from the start, which is what draws these poets together, aside from this huge wealth? Shared history, shared culture, shared conflict. There is a real desire thatI think can draw from these poems to remake,I think is probably the termI would [01:12:00] use.

Because yes, the bog is exceptional at preservation and you should preserve history and you should honor history. But if you are too focused on history, you can sink into it. AndI think that is a core, a fundamental root of a lot of these poems is that they are very aware of the history that they can contend with.

They navigate the history so well. And yet there is still a push towards the future. You know, we spoke about creating a sort of Irish canon that is still in the works. There is still a drive to doing that. so on balance,I think that. What draws these poets together is the fact that there is a reverence for that history and for that preservation. And yet there is still a reinvention that occurs in each one of these poems, whether that's bringing in ancient ancient history, whether that's bringing in the life of a domestic woman in Ireland, whether that's bringing in an urban or a rural landscape, that slightly changes the face of what Irish literature could look like.

AndI think that's such a [01:13:00] moving element to a lot of the poets we're looking at. So I'm really glad that we actually spanned, a significant period of time today and looked at a more modern poet because it's definitely the way we're moving forward. And there's so many brilliant poets thatI think we could look at from kind of 2000 onwards, you know.

Joe: No,I think that's absolutely whatI would look to end this episode on. is that please, I implore you, do not let this be the end of your experience with Irish literature and art, but the start of it. know, we're talking about a country that right now, or an island, I should say, across the Republic and Northern Ireland that has 7 million people in it.

I mean, it possibly punches more above its weight artistically than any other country on Earth. this country had... Four Nobel laureates in literature, and that doesn't include James Joyce, who didn't win the award, often kind of considered an unofficial winner. It's got some of the greatest songwriters the world's seen, some of, uh, you know, Irish actors have never been better.

Cillian Murphy and Jessie Buckley both winning the Oscar for Best Actor and Actress, respectively, in recent years. So, there is something in the water, as it were, and hopefully we've given you a sense of [01:14:00] what that might be over the course of this episode, but there are countless more poets, writers, songwriters, actors, filmmakers, to engage with if you want to get a better understanding the artistic output of this, very remarkable island. That was a really, really long one. We appreciate you for sticking with us to this point. There are so many other poets and writers we could have done, we haven't even covered poetry written in the Irish language, because neither Maiya nor I are Irish speakers, but again, there's a whole other kind of literary tradition that we could draw upon maybe in a future episode, maybe we can get an Irish-speaking expert on the podcast with us who could help us with that.

But... hope you've enjoyed this episode. I've certainly enjoyed it. It's been a wonderful conversation. But Maiya, what are we talking about next week? 

Maiya: Next week is actually another fun episode for us.Ilove the ones where we can kind of pick and choose from different poets across years and years. So we are focusing on the ballad form next week, which will be a great one. So make sure you tune in for that. And obviously in the meantime, if you can't wait for that episode, go and check out our back catalog. We've done [01:15:00] previous episodes where we cover like our Ozymandias episode a few seasons ago. So hugely recommend you go and listen. If you can't wait until then, but for now, it's goodbye from me.

Joe: and goodbye from me and the whole team at PoemAnalysis.com 

And Poetry+ See you next time.