Remarks to Officialy open a Gala Poetry Reading on International Women’s Day
Coombe Hospital, 8th March 2012
A dhaoine uaisle, tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniú san oispidéal sin. Míle
buíochas daoibh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a chuir sibh romham.
I would like to thank Dr Fitzpatrick and the Board of Guardians and Directors of this Hospital founded in 1826 for inviting me here this evening for this poetry reading to mark the special International Women’s Day celebration.
I use the word 'special' advisedly. 'Special' not only for the day that is in it, but also for the place where we are which by its mission and tradition is a special place and, in the vast majority of cases, a joyous and life-giving place. And then there's the special reason for our being together this evening: to celebrate in every sense of the phrase 'the gift of poetry'.
When I received Dr. Fitzpatrick’s invitation, I accepted it with alacrity. There is such an apt symmetry in linking a place that is all about the commencement of life with a form of creative expression that is all about the living of life – across the spectrum of human experience in all of its wonder and complexity. And, of course, it is particularly appropriate that we should celebrate this linkage between the gift of new life and the gift of poetry on International Women’s Day.
So I congratulate Dr. Fitzpatrick and his colleagues for the discernment and the vision they are displaying in incorporating poetry into the working experience of the Coombe Hospital so that it can inspire and be enjoyed by the patients and staff who traverse your rooms and corridors. I also want to thank our seven distinguished poets for their generosity in being part of this wonderful initiative – Enda Wyley, Dermot Bolger, Katie Donovan, Paul Durcan, Paul Meehan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Colm Toibín. The optimal environment to listen to poetry is when it is accompanied by beautiful music, for which I also convey thanks to Colm Mac Con Iomaire.
Poetry has many attributes but one that seems especially welcome in our age of hyperbole is that of distillation. Eavan Boland in her poem 'The Muse Mother' observes a mother with child in arms on a wet day:
She jockeys him to her hip,
pockets the nappy liner,
collars rain on her nape
and moves away
and as she moves away the poet reflects on the abiding primal language of her interaction, what becomes in the last line of the poem
my mother tongue
There is a sense in which – whatever the language it is spoken in or written in – poetry is the mother tongue.
For our inner ear, even if the full dictionary meaning escapes us, there is a connection with the sense and the music of poetry in our native tongue. Listen to this short section of an early poem by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill called Ag Cothú Linbh which means Feeding A Child:
As ceo meala an bhainne
as brothall scamallach maothail
éiríonn an ghrian de dhroim
na maolchnoc
mar ghuine óir
le cur i do ghlaic,
a stór
Ólann tú do shá ó mo chíoch
is titeann siar i do shuan
isteach i dtaibhreamh buan,
tá gáire ar do ghnúis.
cad tá ag gabháil trí do cheann,
tusa ná fuil
ach le coicíos ann?
From honey-dew of milking
From the cloudy heat of bee stings
The sun rises up the back
Of bare hills,
A guinea gold
To put in your hand, my own.
You drink your fill from my breast
and fall back asleep
into a lasting dream
laughter in your face.
What is going through your head
you who are but
a fortnight on earth?
These references to poems about motherhood may have an aptness in our location tonight. But I do not intend to suggest that the range of women's poetry is in any sense prescribed or circumscribed by motherhood, womanhood, sisterhood, neighbourhood or any other default perspective. There is every kind of delight and darkness to be found in the work of women poets. Here is Katie Donovan from a poem of a decade ago called 'The Bed':
Today I strip the bed –
like pulling off a skin –
the bare mattress
is a quilted map
of places we never reached.
I twist out
the long screws
that bolt the frame together.
The bed falls apart –
a loose rack of bones.
Poetry enriches our lives, searches our past, illuminates the now of our lives and imagines our future, making us stop in our busy-ness, even the busy-ness of a hospital like this. Far from being marginal, poetry by its distilled use of language can help to centre us. Sometime the effect is lyrical in its intensity and even a fragment can stop time and carry moment. Enda Wyley writes of
An oval green bowl made greener
With hard pears piled inside
But it is not always lyrical and affirming, no more than this hospital which for all its life-giving and for all the joy it witnesses, can also be a place, for some, of great pain and bitter disappointment.
That is the human condition and poetry also reaches into the dark places for poetry is as interested in truth as it is in beauty. Here's a fragment from a Paula Meehan poem of a few years ago called 'Bad Fairy', recalling the events of the night of a christening:
There was a stabbing and a window got broken.
A car scratched with a key. One boy
got a bottle in the face
and someone puked in the garden.
I realise of course that the gift we celebrate tonight is not just the gift of poetry but of writing, and not just that of women writers only, but 'on the day that's in it' I know that Paul (Durcan), Colm (Tóibín) and Dermot (Bolger) will understand my wish to treat exceptionally and celebrate especially the work of their female colleagues.
And because this is INTERNATIONAL Women's Day, and because the mother tongue of poetry is truly a world language, it is appropriate that I conclude my remarks with a poem by an American poet Diane Loomas. Appropriately enough too it is a poem on the subject of child-rearing. It speaks for itself and it certainly speaks for me:
If I had my child to raise over again,
I'd finger paint more, and point the finger less.
I'd do less correcting, and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less, and know to care more.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I'd run through more fields, and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging, and less tugging.
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd teach less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love.
In conclusion then, I would like to thank Dr Fitzpatrick for the invitation this evening. I congratulate him on this idea of bringing poetry and the arts into hospital. I wish all the patients in hospital good health and happiness and I congratulate the staff here on the work which they do.
I wish you all the very best for the future.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir!