POETRY/However Blow the Winds: We are living in a time of hope and resurgence in Waterford life, not only on the playing-fields of Munster but in areas of trade and heritage. The recent uncovering of a huge Viking settlement at Woodstown serves well as a metaphor of Deise recovery.
This new anthology from the indefatigable John Ennis, Stephanie McKenzie and Randal Maggs fits neatly into that template of Waterford renewal. This book is a fully-laden factory-ship of the Atlantic poetry trade. It follows in the wake of Ennis and McKenzie's previous book, The Backyards of Heaven.
That work was a trawl through contemporary waters of Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador - within which they caught nearly all the big fish of the present, from Heaney to Randal Maggs, from Paula Meehan to Paul Durcan.
It is not possible to exaggerate the extraordinary relationship between Waterford and the Canadian East of Labrador and Newfoundland. Ships and oceans, storms and survivors, fish and ballads, all coagulate to form a bridge of narrative across the sea. As happens so often in Irish life, culture and shared narrative has created new political and trading connections. There is now an Ireland Newfoundland Partnership that is, more than coincidentally, a major sponsor of Ennis and McKenzie's prodigious work. The Backyards of Heaven was a kind of telephone call, an alert sent out from poet to poet, but because of the depth of connections uncovered it was inevitable that a larger, more historical anthology awaited assembly.
However Blow the Winds is such a book. It is a veritable family barbecue of 250 years. Here all the connections are made visible in a great Tramore-like picnic of song and poetry. The book opens - as such anthologies should - with a creation myth, a Labrador Innu myth of the journey to get fire, over a bridge formed by whales. But the anthology moves quickly into the rich banks of sea shanties and poems. John Grace's 'The Petty Harbour Bait Skiff' addresses us directly, "Ye people all both great and small" -
"John French was our commander, Mick Sullivan second hand,
All the rest were brave young men, belong to Newfoundland;
Six brave youths to tell the truth were buried in the sea,
But Menchington spared by Providence to live a longer day."
And the poem 'Water Witch' has "Come all ye true-born fishermen and listen to my song" while a ballad on the wreck of the Ethie begins "Come all you true countrymen, come listen to me./ A story I'll tell you of the S.S. Ethie". Reading them as they peel off the pages one can taste the salt off the oilcloth and smell the sour porter from large bottles. This opening section resonates with the sea and its cruel reality. The shanties find a counter-poise, a well-set ballast, in Donnchadh Rua MacConmara's 'Eachtra Ghiolla an Amaráin' -
"D'fhanas 'na bh-feighil sin suim de leathibh
Ag feitheamh ar loing dho raghadh as
Eireann -
Bhí captaoin Allen, fearmeanmnach aereach
Ag teacht fá'n mbaile, is nír bh-fada gur reídheas leis."
Brilliantly translated into idiomatic couplets by Tomás Ó Flannghaile:
"Till Captain Allen, so gallant and gracious,
Arrived in Waterford's harbour spacious."
Having opened with such tremendous energy, the editors proceed with a flotilla of thematic sections: Naming the Islands, Homecoming and She Pushed Her Secret Out. In such a context Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's 'The Second Voyage' as well as Nuala Ní Dhómhnaill's 'Peirsifine', with its "Thug sé leis ar thuras thar sáile me/thar roan m'aithne", take on a new kind of life - many a Waterford Odysseus rested on his oar and wondered where he had brought his wife.
This anthology contains new stars as well, fulfilling a key public duty of the anthologist, which is to ferry new writers to new readerships. There is a generous selection here of the work of Carmelita McGrath, a wonderfully individualistic voice
"Out in the garden, night-scented stock
breathes next to the deck
and the moon
is a suggestion three quarters full."
McGrath is a real find, as are Mary Dalton and Des Walsh; Dalton is sharp, insistent, dramatic, while Walsh is a cerebral voice with a sense of history and political alarm: "We are all North Americans now, the same as those Pablo Neruda wearied of."
However Blow the Winds is a book two continents wide. It is a tribute to that anxiety for recovery and celebration so evident in the great Waterford-Newfoundland-Labrador project. The editors have served this project well. A great orchestra of poetry sails aboard their ship. Perhaps the editors will perform an even greater task over time - to bring each individual poet ashore, canoe by canoe, so that we can get to know them better and celebrate their long and poignant voyages.
Thomas McCarthy is a Co Waterford poet who works in the offices of Cork 2005. His next collection, Merchant Prince, will be published by Anvil Press Poetry in November
However Blow the Winds Edited by John Ennis, Randall Maggs and Stephanie McKenzie Scop Productions, Waterford, and the Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, WIT, 612pp. €25