Seamus Heaney’s last words

At the Celtic colloquium, some hot young scholar, flexing the biceps of his intellect, presented a thesis on poet Seamus Heaney and synesthesia, insisting that Seamus was unaware of what he was doing. that it came naturally. Everyone nodded their heads sagely as if in agreement. I spluttered. The air was dancing with the images of Klee and Kandinsky, tight little figures dueling in the air, musical notes taking flight. The sharp odor of oranges, a pungent wake-up call. 

But mine was the lone voice of dissent,  the presenter’s words grated like a nail-file, full of grit and dust. The pale afternoon light was a seething beast of contradiction. I said, But all poets mix their senses. It comes with a turf, thinking outside the box. Tools of the trade.  It’s a territorial imperative of sorts. My voice twirled into scarlet ribbons, and bled out on the floor, I thought of the barber’s pole spinning madly. No one was listening.

Just today, I was working on my car and as I jabbered to myself, I realized I was automatically rendering my inane actions into prose, it’s something that goes on in the background, sub rosa, like that orchestra of tinnitus in my ears. No off switch. But the prose began to take on a life of its own, mixing the senses as if trying the idea on for size, dressing metaphor in the aisles at the thrift store. Do I remember any of them? Of course not. It happens on a subliminal level and then I unwind the process later. 

So, besides coming into the writing workshop late, I can’t seem to create an environment where synaesthesia will flourish naturally. Today, I am a bystander. Late late late. But when someone reads about Provincetown, I think of Fire Island, a place I’ve never been, and Frank O’Hara in Why I am not a Painter, wrote a dozen poems on oranges—he doesn’t mention the word orange once, while his friend Mike painted the word sardines on his canvas—and then obliterated it until all that was left was a few  letters. And he called it Sardines. I think of those elusive silvered fish of thought, wishing it was another kettle of fish altogether. I wanted it to be salmon, the fish of wisdom.

I imagined Seamus Heaney in an old dressing gown, and tattered slippers rundown at the heel, squatting  over a mossy pond like Bashō, as if in benediction, feeding the fish hazelnuts. But I am allergic to hazelnuts. The epipen is my lodestone. Wisdom ululating in the sacred well with haloed words ripening on the wind. And language becomes a palimpsest of lost thoughts. Words begin to blur on the edges of the canvas until they swim away into the air.

The fish seeking the secrets of the air, all those wayward words nibbling at the shore of cyberspace. I would’ve written more, finally I was in the zone, but my iPad shut down mid-sentence with a warning that it was too hot to continue. The screen turned black as night with no stars in sight. The thermometer bled down the screen. Not even Andromeda could rescue me now. It timorously asked, Would you like to make an emergency call? I thought of Seamus’s last words: Noli timere. Be not afraid, as a black dalia of blood blossomed in his brain.

1/2/24 WOW Writes, with Dulcie Witman

Remembering Séamus Heaney at UC Berkeley

Tribute to Séamus Heaney at UC Berkeley. Featured readers were UC professors (Heaney taught at Berkekey) Robert Hass, Robert Tracy, Peter Dale Scott, Morton Paley, Geoffrey O'Brien, C.S Giscombe, Catherine Flynn, Eric Falci, James G Turner, plus many from the community including Vice Consul Kevin Byrne, Neil O'Neill, Leslie Cody, Shay Black, and myself.

Someone read Digging, another read Oysters (two of my favorites—nearly committed to memory. The Burren is another.) Several read selections from Station Island: IV was brutal, Dantesque, about The Troubles. Neil read Sloe Gin.

We told Seamus stories, the poet's job was to explore the marginalia of life, and since I'd studied medieval Irish mss at UC, I read The Glosses. Three poems of kites, it became a theme. Someone read from Heaney's Beowulf, then Dante, another read pithy literary criticism notes.

And stories, yes, the stories. There's no such thing as a short whiskey or a short poetry reading. Bob Hass recounted what Heaney told him: "Sex is in its infancy in Ireland." Our homework was to read Heaney's Irish erotic poem, The Skunk, of course.
 
Among the storytellers were my favorite seanchaí professor and Joyce scholar, first translator of Osip Mandelstam, Bob Tracy who testified at Lenny Bruce's obscenity trial. I think he testified at Joyce's too.

Fellow Marin poet and longtime friend, Bob Hass read from The Apple Trees of Olema—my home stomping ground. At an Occupy Cal demonstration at UC Berkeley, Hass was hit in the ribs by a police officer with a baton. His wife Brenda Hillman was shoved to the ground. There's a YouTube video of it. Bob got back. He wrote about it in a New York Times opinion piece, "Poet-Bashing Police." 11//19/2011.

Both Bob Hass and Geoffrey O'Brien took part in Occupy Cal. O'Brien spoke out to a police officer who was hitting a Berkeley student because he would not break his link in a human chain. The police officer then hit O'Brien in the ribs, a reaction he would later call "brutal."  

So many new faces (at least to me). Lovely man, Peter Dale Scott. Some may know his Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror.  And Eric Falci, C.S Giscombe whose work has appeared in Callaloo, Another Chicago Magazine, Hambone, New American Writing, o.blek, Obsidian, River Styx, Situation and Samizdat.  

Irish VIce Consul, Kevin Byrne

Our new Irish Vice Consul, Kevin Byrne, a Dublin man. His first event in America? A Séamus Heaney tribute. Seamus Heaney would've enjoyed it.
 
The Maude Fife Room temperature was 110°—due to an electrical eruption this AM at UC Berkeley, nobody could figure out how to turn off the heat. It was a real Dante's Inferno—so we held the memorial tribute to Seamus Heaney in the hallway at Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley—t'was like a longship cathedral of poetry. Perhaps it was the feast Hall, Herorot. Beowulf was invoked in both languages. Dante too. It was a real poetry roast. Heaney would've like that.

It was so hot even in the hall, we shed what clothes we could, my silk scarf became an impromptu podium cloth. By the time the reading began, there were chairs all the way to the far end of the hall.

At first they thought the electrical explosion was a bomb. Huge fireball. Someone stole copper wire from an underground utility station. The entire campus was w/o electricity for most of the day. Instead of cancelling classes, students took out their smartphones as a source of light, and carried on.

So the least we could do, was to carry on ourselves. Even with every window and door on the 3rd floor open, cross ventilation, the room was like an oven—a bit like standing in front of the glory hole of a big glass kiln.

An amazing turnout. Even if we were all nearly broiled in the process. It was hot as a crematorium. A smithy's forge. The Goibniu, Himself was in attendance. 

 Afterwards, we ate and drank and told stories—we spread a little joy. Bob Hass sad to take the leftover food from the reception, and as we walked down Telegraph, so many homeless. So we gave a shoutout to Occupy Telegraph with a poet's funeral feast. And so we fed about 20 folks on the street. Poco a poco, that's how it's done. There's a poem embedded in this somewhere.

Ta to Bob Hass & Christopher Miller for an abfab event.

Fitting that my 10,000th tweet was in tribute to Seamus Heaney: for 10,000 birds have taken flight across the dark shoulder of the night.

Noli timere!  a Shéamus! Rest in peace.

Remembering Seamus Heaney

Three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature, knowledge. —Old Irish triad

"Once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme."

                  —Seamus Heaney

I first met Seamus in the early 1980s. I heard him read on KPFA FM—I never could get decent radio signal in Forestville—and I turned it on, only to hear his sonorous voice.

I hopped into my truck (code name: Blue Lazarus) and drove on down to SF (or was it Berkeley?) but the only seat left in the house was right in the front row—and so I sat in it, next to a woman. She patted the seat next to her—said sit. It was still warm.

We got to chatting, she said she was an Irish schoolteacher. I gave her a CPITS poetry book from my CAC poetry residency in Santa Rosa. And so the penny eventually dropped, it was Mairi, his wife. I was sitting in Seamus's recently vacated seat, it was the hot seat. Not many can claim their seat was warmed by the heat of Seamus' bum.

Thus began a friendship that spanned decades—he once sent me a letter from Adams House, Harvard—praising my voice, my long line. Gawd only know what I sent him. A letter I treasured. It gave me hope during a time when no one would publish my work. Too long, too personal, too difficult.

Our paths crossed on myriad occasions. I ran into Seamus again at the Avenali Lecture Berkekey—he always remembered me. Always chatted—sometimes in Irish, as he signed my latest collection of books.

Then I got to spend some time with Seamus at Poetry International encampment during the Summer Solstice in Rotterdam. I told him my grandmother was a Heaney, he laughed, called me coozin, giving me a big smacker. We sang Irish songs, lifted our glasses high.

Most memorable moment: we were stuck in an elevator between floors, a gaggle of poets from around the world—mostly African poets. Seamus  proclaimed that his whiskey flask had sprung a leak, and so we all drank tots from the lid and when it was done, we sang songs and proclaimed ourselves a collective noun. I said: a Genius of Poets. He repeated: almost on the same breath: a Genius of Poets. And so we were, and me, the only woman.

I read that Ted Hughes's Lupercal, spurred Heaney on to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life." Heaney once said to Sameer Rahim, that "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.” I am reminded of what Seamus said in an interview, "Each poet is alone with his or her chances at the end as much as at the beginning." – 1996 interview w/ Seamus Heaney

In August of 2006, Heaney suffered a stroke, he said that left him "babyish" and "on the brink." An interesting place to find oneself in poetry. When he was fitted with a heart monitor, Heaney joked, "Blessed are the pacemakers..."

At the end of November, after the memorial readings were done, I dreamt Seamus came to visit, I was sitting on his knee as he reminisced about life. When I grabbed my camera, to take a photo of him, it was full of sand. In this way, I knew he was truly gone. 

Irish President Michael D. Higgins said: "...so many rights organisations will want to thank him for all the solidarity he gave to the struggles within the republic of conscience." Seamus lived like his poetry, upstanding, forthright, and generous. He was everyman's hero. It was a great honor to spend time with him in Berkeley, San Francisco, at the Marin Civic Center, and Poetry International in Rotterdam—and a few places in between. Seamus was always generous with his time, and always kind.

I didn't know those of us who went to see Famous Seamus every chance we got, were dubbed "Heaneyboppers" but I don't regret one moment of it. He was always seeking that phrase of light. He was my lodestone, my candle of truth, my bearla—my government of the tongue.

After a fall outside a Dublin restaurant, Seamus entered hospital. The newspapers reported that while waiting for a medical procedure, he texted a last message to his wife, Mairi. Noli timere, “Do not be afraid,” minutes before he died. His famous last words, not quite written in stone, but close enough.

May he rest in poetry. Go ndéana Dia fáilte roimh Shéamus, ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís.

A Genius of Poets

In Colin Will's blog, Sunny Dunny, I read that Seanus Heaney suffered a small stroke two years back. I was shocked to hear the news from afar but relieved to know that he's on the mend. I'd heard something about it via the grapevine, but it was all the more shocking to see it so formal in print.

Seamus comes to SF/Berkeley every few years and we catch up. Come to think of it, it's been quiet on the Seamus front for some time, now. UC Berkeley hosts a Celtic Colloquium around St. Patrick's Day on the odd years (UCLA on even years) so we usually see Seamus in the madness of March.

Long before he became affectionately known in the Irish poetry community as "Famous Seamus," I first met him back in the 1981. One sunny afternoon on "A Terrible Beauty," KPFA FM, radio host Padraigin McGillicuddy was broadcasting the poems (Field Work) of this marvelous Northern Irish poet, a visiting professor at Harvard, who was scheduled to read later that evening at UC Berkeley.

It must've been around St Patrick's Day as I was hungry for some good Irish music, and of course, Padraigin's acerbic wit. She was reading about feminism & St Patrick, so it was an incendiary show.

Other than Padraigin's show, I rarely listened to the radio as it was difficult getting reception so far out in the country, unless the planets were aligned and the wind blew just right. We were ringed by coastal mountains and tall redwoods. But Padraigin was a force of nature to be reckoned with. If she said, "You simply MUST go and hear this poet read," then so we did. Seamus's disembodied voice rang out like the bell of St Patrick and disturbed the air around it.

I jumped into my old blue VW bug and drove 75 miles to Highway 101 and crossed the Richmond Bridge over to Berkeley just to hear him read (I lived in a remote part of Sonoma County, near the Russian River). It was a life-changing event that solidified my dedication to poetry. I was fairly new to writing but then I'd jumped feet first into the deep waters and learned to swim in the process. Well, maybe flounder....

I was terrified my '69 VW bug wouldn't make it the distance, as it was already old and on its last legs. It had a delicate carburetor and intermittent electrical coil issues so driving at night was a risky affair. I spent far too many hours by the side of the road fiddling with wires and fuel line to get it going. It wasn't cheap to drive to Berkekey either, plus I had an unreasonable fear of cities, having grown up in the rural backwaters of the country with cows and sheep....

Back then, I had a sort of agoraphobia (a real fear of the crowded marketplace) in the truest sense of the word. I rarely, if ever, left the wilds of West Sonoma County to visit the metropoli of San Francisco or Berkeley (despite the catchy milk ad" cows in Berkeley?), unless there was a compelling reason. Seamus's poetry was reason enough for me to crawl out of the hills.

It was an amazing evening. As luck would have it, I sat next to his wife Mairi (in the only seat left in the auditorium—I later realized it was Seamus's seat—talk about being in the hot seat!) and Mairi and I hit it off like a house afire as she was a teacher, I'd given her a book of my students' poetry and art (I was a California Arts Council artist in residence at a Santa Rosa school).

And so began my long distance poetic friendship with Seamus. Somewhere in cold storage, I have a letter he wrote to me while he was at Harvard, in praise of my long(winded) lines and sense of place in my poems—I will have to dig it out one day. Gawd only knows what drivel I sent him, one can only blush from afar, across time and distance.

* * *
We were at Poetry International in 1996, stuck in a sluggish elevator between floors with a crazy gaggle of giggling African poets, so Seamus pulled out a bottle and we were all drinking uisce beatha from a tiny bottle cap making all manner of toasts to the Summer Solstice and whatnot.

Keeping the whiskey flowing, Seamus discovered that his flask had, in fact, "developed a terrible leak" and that it was a at least a cardinal sin to to be ever putting the cap back on such a wee flask such as his until it was empty when we were in such good company.

So we lubricated our minds and invented toasts to many odd things. Geert van Istendael was soon proclaiming that ALL poets were Celts and so the African poets proclaimed themselves as being Black Irish and raised the bottle cap to the dim elevator light in giddy agreement.The best round was to toast a noun as we were all pretty much pure verb at that point and needed a good solid earthy noun to steady us down.

We coined a collective noun for a group of poets as a "Genius of Poets." Seamus and I shouted out in unison.

The elevator doors finally crept open and we stepped into the lobby, forever changed. A genius of poets blinded by the light.

Heal well, my friend. Heal well, the poet's spade isn't done excavating yet. Neil says, "Read the hand!"

Notes on Iona Hostel Poems

The Iona blogeen started out as a small memory fragment and then I was overwhelmed with all the history I wanted to include. Hence, the "Under Construction" sign. Will I ever got back to it?

As I researched Iona, I later found out that St Columba is the Patron Saint of poets, the reason why all those laminated poems were stapled to the undersides of our bunks at the hostel. Now, how did I miss that crucial bit of information?

The 12 posted poets/poems (there were more) I managed to record with my camera were:

The Bloody Orkneys, Anon (penned by a bored naval officer, Hamish Blair stationed there during the War)
Whitby-sur-Moyola, Seamus Heaney
The Eemis Stane, and The Bonnie Broukit Bairn, Hugh MacDiarmid
Can I fly Too?, Philip Hobsbaum
Evening, H. D.
Intrusion of the Human; An Ordinary Day; and Wild Oats, Norman MacCaig
The Bride, Tom Scott
The Tree, Maureen Sangster
The Voyeur, Tom Leonard
The Moment, Kathleen Raine

There were many more poems...and so little time. I was in hog heaven, at the hostel at the end of the island. Poems, twilight, and the white sand shore.

Outside the front door of the hostel, on the hill was a stone carved with a verse about being still that I forgot to take a photo of. I wish I had it now.

I looked up the poets on the internet and most seem to be either from the West of Scotland (writing in Scots dialects, primarily of the beauty of untrammeled nature), or they lived in the West of Scotland.

I found that many of these early to mid- 20th c. poets were associated with Philip Hobsbaum's literary school, "The Group," including Seamus Heaney. I do remember Seamus mentioning Hobsbaum and "The Group" as being central to his writing style.

And some of the selected poets were friends of Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) or Louis MacNeice. Some are associated with the Universities of Edinburgh or Glasgow.

Anti-Scottish Romanticism seems to be a core element, as is Scottish Modernist/ Nationalism. Of course, Heaney and H.D. aren't Scottish... H.D. and Norman MacCaig write in an imagist free verse style, closest to my own work.

I couldn't find "The Tree", or Maureen Sangster anywhere on the internet. If anyone has information, it's be much appreciated.

My low-light photos of the poems are very poor, I was able to find several poems online. Maybe I will write a blog on them later. Meanwhile, this entry will serve to identify the poems. If anyone else has any info on the poems or other poems hot listed, please drop me a line.

Iona, The Inner Hebrides, Scotland

Just getting to the sacred isle of Iona was strewn with so many hurdles that it made going on pilgrimage seem like a piece of cake. After a few untimely mishaps in Oban, we missed the early CalMac ferry to the Hebridean Isle of Mull. We missed it because Neil was overtired from his music gig the night before at Markie Dan's Pub in the basement of the four-star SYHA hostel, the Victorian Corran House.

And like a foundered horse, Neil O'Neill just couldn't get up to speed. No amount of carroty bribes or verbal threats would move him. It wasn't just the craic and the free beer or the amazing variety of scotch to choose from, or dancing with Anne, or jammin' with his old friend, Louis Barrow, that wore him out.

He was at cross-purposes with himself—being both long in tooth and long in jaw. Too much gift of the gab. And a good time was had by all. A real ceili that went on into the wee hours. Whereas I was just plain old cross as a bear. Next morning, even at top dead speed, Neil ONeill, the man so nice they named him twice, was in slo-mo. And that was that.

The tourist resort and fishing village of Oban, in Argyleshire, smack dab in the middle of the whisky trail, is also the leaping off point to the Gateway to the Isles. With incredible sweeping views of the Inner Hebrides, the Isle of Kerrera (where Alexander II of Scotland died), and the mountains of Mull, the Oban waterfront has it all. A picturesque horseshoe harbor, and a waterfront, with rainbow-hued houses much like the Hebridean villages of Tobermory or Bonnie Portree, but on a grander scale, Oban has its share of towers and castles too—even a Victorian folly replica of the Roman Coliseum looms on the horizon.

There is nothing more desolate than hearing the departure whistle of the ferry you're supposed to be on. No ferry tickets were left for the next sailing two hours later either. It was full up. Which meant visiting both Mull and Iona were out of the question. To have come this far and be thwarted by time and circumstance, was testing what little self-control I had left. I was feeling positively gladatorial. My Irish was up. And there's no putting it back switch. Must've been a combination of the whisky vapors and the coliseum on the hill spurring me on to a full-blown tantrum.

But we got a last minute (re-)prize, or rather (sur)prise ferry tickets from Anne, a local fairy godmother, who was good at pulling in strings and had a few local favors due. With the help of the incredible, the inimitable and stately Anne McDonald, proprietor with her daughter, of the Corran House Hostel, who was a former teacher from the Isle of Mull, and friend to actors—we managed to squeeze in a mad overnight jaunt to the holy isle of Iona.

Anne found us sitting like stunned birds in our rental car, ensconced in the ferry wait-listed Godot lane, in utter despair. The air was thick with disappointment. We missed the boarding cutoff by three cars. I brushed aside my tears and flagellated: if only Neil had gotten it together sooner.... Not being able to board the ferry was like a body blow. Our last hopes had vanished, sunk like a stone to the bottom of the harbor of regret.

But Anne came up to the car, smartly rapped on the window, and handed us the coveted ferry tickets—which we couldn't purchase for love or money. She said we'd have to pretend we were residents—a little hard to pull off in a rental car. But everyone kindly looked the other way. Anne was truly a guardian angel. I was sad to see her go. It was like leaving family behind on a distant shore. But the ferry was boarding. They waved us on.

We were elated. The ferry ride from Oban on the Firth of Lorn, to the Isle of  Mull, second largest of the Inner Hebridean islands, was amazing and postcard scenic. The passage takes about 45 minutes and you pass very close by Duart Castle, the oldest inhabited castle on Mull, home of the 28th Chief of Clan MacLean. The quintessentially Scottish Duart Castle was featured in Entrapment (1999) with Sean Connery (a Maclean on his mother's side) and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

I stood on the tallest deck of the ferry and spread my wings—a nylon windbreaker—and I was transported, or  rather, momentarily airborne. I was hovering over the deck like a big black bird in the gale winds sweeping unfettered down the Lynn of Lorn, Loch Linnhe. We passed a lighthouse on Eilean Musdile guarding the southern tip of low-lying Lismore island (the great garden isle), once a major center of Celtic Christianity. Oddly, where the water is still on the leeward side, the 1883 lighthouse that replaced the standing stone that once marked the winter solstice, looks like a stripped down version of the Taj Mahal.

The ferry ride was too soon over. I wanted to sail on up the passage to Skye and the Isle of Lewis. But Mull was the gateway to Iona. We landed at the wee village of Craignure (little more than a wide spot in the road) on Mull's eastern shore, and headed south on a country road. We passed the entrance to Duart Castle. Incredible jeweled finger bays off the Firth of Lorne, sheltered coves. It was like being in Northern California and in the tropics at the same time—indescribable turquoise and cobalt waters, white sand beaches.

The isle of Mull is quite large and mountainous. As we drove down the sinuous road, through valley & glen, I kept thinking I was in Ireland. The Hebridean Isles, scrupulously scoured and carved by glaciers, are quite different than the rest of Scotland. The lowlands is a misnomer—there are long rolling ridges, but als a sameness to the topography.

We had little flex time to spare to catch the Iona ferry at Fionnphort, so we drove like banshees down the fantastic glaciated Ross of Mull peninsula, wildly swerving around flocks of Hebridean and merino sheep and sollitary cyclists. It takes approximately an hour to sanely drive from Craignure to Fionnaphort (pronounced Finafor)  on a 40-mile-long sinuous one-lane road. Not many tourists, but lots of sheep, so we rarely had to make use of the skinny little pullouts for oncoming traffic.

We rounded a bend and wended through the croft-village of Bunessan with its sole hotel/pub on the shores of the seaweed garden of Loch Scridain. An oncoming lorry and no turn-outs meant we had to back our way through the village in reverse. Odd way to sightsee backwards. (Bunessan is home of the Gaelic hymn, Child in a Manger, known to Cat Stevens fans as Morning Has Broken). Ben More was hiding in its own weather system.

Then another wide spot in the road, the hamlet of Pennygheal, marked with strange striped barber poles designating a passing spot. Sad to see so much beauty whizzing by at 60 MPH. No time to lose. And then it was on to Fionnphort, population 70-80, depending on who's counting,

But we missed the Iona foot ferry by minutes, and then we missed the 2nd ferry too as we had to park the car up at the St Columba Museum, because we found out too late that the road shoulders were marked No Parking. Then we had to lug our stuff down to the ferry... Luckily they came every 30 minutes, more or less, depending on the weather and the inclinations of the captain. Hard to believe that some 140,000 tourists a year are funneled through here.

The ferry disgorged its handful of foot passengers, returning tourist-pilgrims and some four-footed ones–sheep! Was I the only one enjoying the religio-pastoral joke? We lugged our gear down the ramp. The black-faced sheep suspiciously eyed Neil's guitar case and daintily stepped aside. The tourists droned on in loud superior-than-thou tourist tones. Nothing worse than a gaggle of smug returning pilgrims.

From aboard the ferry, we admired the small harbor of Fionnphort, finger slot coves, scalloped beaches, the incredible clear blue water, and on a shoal, a large rounded granite glacial erratic boulder cleaved in two by time itself. Twain worlds indeed.

Anim Chara

The cats formed semi-colons at the foot of my bed: intensity overwhelms those who don’t understand the Celtic temperament. As if it were my fault, I dream of people before I meet them. A good Cartesian response to the unmeasurable.

I know craziness second-hand, my mother’s indulgements—influenced by the drug-induced ’60s & ’70s. Then, my grandmother also spent her free time wandered about the house muttering curses to Cromwell, the Anglo Saxons & Jutes. The sassanach, she spat.

When I was a child, I thought they were swear words. I knew they were bad, very bad, that I mustn’t forget my history. Who we are, where we came from. And when I recognize “kin” so far from home, I am overwhelmed. It’s a rare and pleasurable thing to meet like-minded souls.

At 20, I knew I was different than others. . . I‘ve learned that the doors of perception don’t open for everyone: if so, forgive my trespass. There’s an Irish word for it: anim chara (soul/heart friend).

To sleep, to dream. . . Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine: people live in one another’s shadows. I dreamed I had to memorize 5 lines in Welsh—it was all a jumble of sounds, with no images to hang onto. I no sooner got one line down, when it forced out the one preceding it, and so on through the night. I can’t even begin to pronounce Welsh, I barely know the rules of Irish. I awoke with the cadence of another language in my head. Perhaps this is the Welsh poet Paul Evan’s parting gift to me. Pay attention to the rhythms. Teachers come in the most surprising forms.

Once Vins van Neervan and I went to Leuven in Belgium where he went to University to study philosophy. Wandering Marika's city, we stumbled upon an arch with Old Irish enscribed on the lintel.

To my surprise, I was able to decipher it. . . perhaps one of the few visitors able to do so in the past several hundred years. We found the gates to a college founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. And here we are, archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) on the verge of extinction for nearly as many centuries. And we’ve so rudely taken a long time dyin’ at that.

The Celts are going, the Celts are going at last. Hurrah! Soon a Celt on the streets of Dublin will be as rare as seeing an Indian on the streets of Manhattan.—British Government, ca. 1847.

In my family, we eat sodabread with tea, croon Irish songs when the uisge beatha gets the better of us: Oh the praties they grow small. . .

My grandmother, Jennie (Sínead) Walsh Reilly, never let us forget our history: 1 to 4.5 million dead from the Famine Years. We managed to hold onto our farms: the Walshes, and Sullivans of Bantry—at Coomb an n-Or; Gort na Sgrena; the Reillys and Duffys of Long Kesh, Fioragh and Drogheda on my grandfather’s side.

They came to America in 1919 and 1904, respectively. They were active in the Gaelic League, my grandfather was one of the movers and shakers of the Knights of the Red Branch in San Francisco, the IRA gunrunning story I’ve told before.

When Lord Russell said: the famine is good, teach ’em a lesson, the Choctaw Indian nation collected something to the tune of $212 for food; they sent us maize. Too late. Coffin ships to America. Slavers to the Barbados. From the Celtic Fringe to the Celtic diaspora. All those children sold in slavery: this is why so many Blacks have Irish surnames, blue eyes and freckles.

They say there was enough food in Ireland to feed 20 million. Instead we fed the British with our bones. Their sheep replaced us. But we survived. Sínn Fein: Ourselves, alone, she said, Never forget. Use their language against them, she said.

This, my inheritance. Slainte Gael macushla mo chroidhe. During the famine years, ships filled with Irish cattle and grain sailed for Britain while we died with grass stains on our teeth. Béal na blát: from the mouth of flowers. I am allergic to both corn and potatoes (as well as hazelnuts—the kernel of knowledge).

My father’s history I know very little of: Joseph Hurley from County Cork. There’s a Rebel Cork connection, but my paternal grandmother, Viola Heaney was born in San Francisco. Something about Lace Curtain Irish, that may be a rumor, but I have a sideboard of heavy Irish crystal.

Odd that I might be distantly related to Séamus Heaney. . . At Poetry International in 1993, I told him of this connection, he laughed, called me coozin, giving me a big smacker. We sang Irish songs, lifted our glasses high.

I told him of my grandfather’s IRA connections, I was surprised to learn he knew of my grandfather’s friend Liam Mellows. And of course, Parnell. All this fragmented history, my grandmother literally cursing Cromwell till her dying day.

Something struck me about our having a racial lack of confidence—rang a bell: my grandmother said similar words to that effect. The fighting underdog. I wish I knew more about our Welsh connections, other than Strongbow, and the Norman Invasion: Hibernius ipsis Hiberniores.

My grandmother maintained we got the name Walsh because we came from Wales—what, 1000 years ago? A bit distant. My great-grandfather Michael Walsh raised fast horses, drove cattle between bonfires at Lúgnasadh to ensure fertility. Ironically Walsh/Welsh means foreigner in the Germanic, wealas. An Anglo Saxon appellation?

One of Alexander of Macedonia’s generals during negotiation of a peace treaty, queried a Celtic chieftain: What do Celts fear most? The Gaul replied in formal address: That the sky should fall upon our heads.

Slogan: sluagh garim, a Celtic battle cry, furor is to blood-summon. How does one come to terms with: Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon (a nation without a language; a nation without a heart). I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war. Glamour, corrupted from grammar, this rough magic by which we strike. It’s in the blood. The dark, threatening sky. Again.

My anim is Maureen/Little Mairi/Mara/Maura (bitter herbs or small rebellion) not the more common Muire (mother of God). I prefer my crib-Irish: she of the sea.

Mor could be translated as great, or muir/ sea, depending on the fada. The Mórríghan is great goddess of the sea. Rí is royalty. The shapechanger war goddess Morrigu isn’t exactly milquetoast, there are others I’d prefer to emulate. At least she doesn’t lie.

© 1997? Maureen Hurley (Originally a letter poem to the Chilean poet Waldo Rojas Serreno)

Poetry International article, Audacious tongues

AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

Poetry is what gets lost in translation
—Robert Frost
As you die/ you meet the light/ of before creation
—Bert Schierbeek

“Sometimes poetry is literally a matter of life and death,” said Martin Mooij, founder and shy godfather of Poetry International in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. A central focus of the 27-year-old literary organization is to liberate poets incarcerated by oppressive governments due to his or her literary work. The annual Poetry International Award “to distinguish an imprisoned poet, was established in 1979 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Poetry International,” said Mooij.

At the 1996 festival, exiled South African writer and political prisoner Breyten Breytenbach, who received the Poetry International Award in 1981, was also the recipient of this year’s translation Vertaalproject where world-class poets participating in the festival translate a selected poet during the annual two-week event. Breytenbach is the only poet to receive both honors.

 Like many of the poets chosen for the Poetry International Award, Breytenbach lives in exile, borderless, without a country, having only his mother tongue to sustain the roots of his art and culture. We began our translation workshop honoring those imprisoned poets—Breytenbach painting the name of the latest recipient of the 18th Poetry International Award, Iraqi poet, Adnam Abbas Salman al-Sayegh, on the Poetry Wall mural on the corner of Niewe Binnenweg and Gaffelstraat in Rotterdam. It is hoped he’ll be released from prison to collect his award.

Executive director Mooij explained, “The Poetry International Award began as a fluke. I'd published some Turkish children's books, and I mentioned the name of an imprisoned poet, Nevzat Çelik.” Mooij said he was merely wondering aloud what had happened to the Turkish poet. Surveying Kruisplein from the squat, modern post-war De Doelen building in Rotterdam, Mooij explained, “The editor promised to write to a government official, and in 1987. . . the poet was set free!”

Mooij continued, “We cooperate closely with PEN International, and the Index on Censorship.” Without the political pressure and media exposure wielded under the auspices of the Poetry International Award, the voices of world-class poets might not be with us today—

Letter to Seamus Heaney (NEED HIS REPLY)