{"id":2780,"date":"2017-12-18T15:42:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T15:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2780"},"modified":"2017-12-18T15:42:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T15:42:28","slug":"coincidences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2780","title":{"rendered":"Coincidences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coincidences<\/p>\n

This time of year perhaps reminds us of those who have gone before us. One is John Montague, the brilliant poet who passed away last December and whom I had the pleasure of meeting with his charming wife Elizabeth in the Eccles Hotel in Glengarriff in West Cork some years ago. I still treasure The Faber Book of Irish Verse which he edited in 1974 with his illuminating introduction on the art of poetry in general and the genus of Irish poetry in particular. He presciently saw the Irish poet as someone \u2018in a richly ambiguous positon, with the pressure of an incompletely discovered past behind him and the whole modern world around\u2026 balanced between the pastoral and the atomic age\u2019. Whatever penpicture John captured, it was always done with accuracy and authenticity such as in Herbert Street Revisited where his old friend Brendan Behan makes an entr\u00e9e:<\/p>\n

A light is burning late
\nin this Georgian Dublin street:
\nsomeone is leading our old lives!<\/p>\n

And the black cat scampering again
\nthrough the wet grass of the convent garden
\nupon his masculine errands.<\/p>\n

The pubs shut: a released bull,
\nBehan shoulders up the street,
\ntopples into our basement, roaring \u2018John!\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Animals, neighbours treading the pattern
\nof one time and place into history,
\nlike our early marriage, while<\/p>\n

tall windows looked down upon us
\nfrom walls flushed light pink or salmon
\nwatching and enduring succession.<\/p>\n

His fascinating memoir The Pear is Ripe https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pear-Ripe-Memoir-John-Montague\/dp\/1905483252 \"\"<\/a>gives witty insights into West Cork people among whom he sojourned for many years, and contains not only an account of his interesting life but many other gems about publishing and the art of writing and poetry.
\n\tWhen my own study of modern poetry was published, Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a Way of Seeing the World https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Clearing-Tangled-Wood-Poetry-Seeing\/dp\/1507778414\/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=, \"\"<\/a>he not only read it, but graciously described it as \u2018a linguistic ballet, learned and lively, on behalf of poetry\u2019.<\/p>\n

Another great writer who passed away not too long ago (in 2016) was Leland Bardwell. Although she was born in India, she moved to Ireland at the age of two. She was of the Anglo\u2013Irish Hone family with links to the artist Nathaniel Hone, and was brought up in what is now the Leixlip House Hotel in County Kildare, not a stone\u2019s throw away from where I live. She was an inspired and inspiring poet and wordsmith, and encouraged many young writers including myself. I remember enjoying in particular her fourth poetry collection The Whtie Beach for the honesty and originality of her poems. Particularly poignant from that collection is her poem Moments:<\/p>\n

No moon slides over Harcourt Terrace.
\nThe canal is black. The barracks
\ncrouches on her left.
\nShe sees the child. He holds his coat
\nacross his chest. On his hands,
\nold socks blunt his fingers.
\nThe handle of his fishing net
\nhas snapped.
\nSleep escapes the old woman
\non her angry couch. Such images
\nassault, torment and tease
\nthe sense of her.
\nTime rolls back on its silent wheels,
\nempties itself into moments.
\nHow many guilts can one human endure.
\nOne human in all the world, alone
\none man or woman holding moments
\nof a child running, holding shut his coat
\nwith socks on his hands. <\/p>\n

It is a coincidence in not only having her muse close to me, but Leland Bardwell also published my first Spanish translation of a poem by Pedro Salinas in Cyphers, the superb literary journal which she cofounded in 1975 with Eil\u00e9an N\u00ed Chuillean\u00e1in, Macdara Woods and the late Pearse Hutchinson.
\n\tThe translation from Pedro Salinas was called Ground:
\n\tGround. Nothing more.
\n\tGround. Nothing less.
\n\tMake do with it.
\n\tBecause your feet are nailed to it
\n\tand your torso to them
\n\tand on the torso a firm head
\n\tand there to the lee of one\u2019s brow
\n\tthe pure thought and in the pure thought
\n\tthe morrow, the key
\n\t\u2013 the morrow \u2013 of the eternal.
\n\tGround. Neither more nor less.
\n\tMake do with it.<\/p>\n

Apart from her poetry, Leland Bardwell also penned a beautiful memoir, A Restless Life, which movingly tells of the difficulties she endured as she tried to find her way in the world, and it also tells of her literary associations with writers of the time such as Patrick Kavanagh. And her novel, Girl on a Bicycle https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Girl-Bicycle-Irish-Classics-Revival\/dp\/1905483791, \"\"<\/a>a moving account of the struggle for individuality in a 1940\u2019s Ireland, deserves classic status. <\/p>\n

\u00a9James Lawless<\/p>\n

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