Home Thoughts – Poetry, Memoir and Song
Gerald Dawe and Eleanor Shanley in Belmont Tower
We don’t cover poetry readings on Folk and Tumble, but this one cried out from the pages of the Eastside Arts Festival programme. Gerald Dawe is up there as one of Ireland’s greatest living poets. Eleanor Shanley has her pedigree in traditional Irish and roots songs, previously with De Danaan and alongside the irreplaceable Ronnie Drew. This fine evening the two are fused in Belmont Tower with the promise of words and music, free flow.
Around a hundred (more or less) are gathered cabaret style in what has all the ambience of a chalky old classroom, complete with dusky light from gothic windows. The cover price of just £8 includes a glass of wine and a complementary book – “Emancipation of the Imagination – Forgotten Writers of East Belfast”. Ye’s can’t be bad to that, as they might say in this neck of the woods, and that’s part and parcel of the embrace of Eastside Arts Festival – value, variety and imaginative venues. It’s a celebration of people, places and all things Eastside while warmly welcoming in assorted artists from afar; or calling home its prodigals and prodigies.
A sense of place is the theme for this evening – and following a brief introduction from the festival’s director Anthony Toner, the poet and professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin takes to the podium like a duck to Victoria Park.
It’s in the nature of the poet to wander far and wide, and although Gerald Dawe was reared in North Belfast, it was in Orangefield he was schooled and inspired by legendary teachers.
He kicks off with the opening paragraphs of a beautifully crafted essay titled “At One Time”, from his memoir The Stoic Man. Strangely, I know this piece almost verbatim. Back in 2008, Gerald Dawe kindly donated to a book I was compiling and editing on commission called “Volunteer Voices: Belfast’s Creative Extremists”. It is a joy to hear these words spoken by their proud parent, his visitation to the ‘sixties, the people, the places and the mother-city that were to fuel his journey into poetry. What’s that got to do with music? Well, you just need to listen very carefully. Dawe’s words are dancers. End of.
In between Dawe’s readings, Eleanor Shanley sings largely a capella, her voice and presence captivating and clear. It’s all about people and place: Carrickferus. Galway to Graceland. Keshcarrigan, a place called home. She dedicates “I’ll tell me ma'” to Ronnie Drew. His seventh anniversary has just passed last week.
Dawe shares memories of moving to Galway in the mid-seventies as a student, dropped in to the West, like a stolen child of the Tuatha de Danaan perhaps.
How alien that must have felt! Then, a first slim book of poetry (Sheltering Places) published by Blackstaff Press in 1978, so slim, it was just a cover (long story). There were technical hitches, even in those days.
As Dawe reads, and Shanely sings, there is a sense of an inaudible beat. In a tribute to Van Morrison, he speaks the lyrics of ‘The Way Young Lovers Do.’ That’s when it hits home – the parallel poetics of Morrison and Dawe.
In his final performance, Dawe reads ‘Shortcuts’ a poem from his latest collection ‘Mickey Finn’s Air. Its pace builds into a crescendo of words and memories, staccato, a stream of conscious memory on memory. Words ricochet around the globe but ultimately this poem is steeped in memories of home – Belfast and beyond, North, South, East and West, Morrison-esque (‘Walking home dead late from Melrose Street’ to ‘looking out the top window in Skegoniel Avenue’). Memories of gigs and venues – ‘Ginger Baker at the Ulster Hall / followed by Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton’ – stanza after stanza, a dance around this city then bounce to Tokyo and back; recollections tumble and toll. This is a poem that will jar in memory, so powerfully told. It’s hard to follow that, but Eleanor Shanley does, with Raglan Road, the Dawning of the Day.
An enchanting evening comes to a close, and I leave feeling gently elevated by the experience. Driving home down Belmont Road, the sun sets behind Napoleon’s Nose, casting hues and tones across our sky – great tongues of fire.
Photos © Nurse Ratched 2015