PROFILE: Niall MacMonagle:Ireland's best-known English teacher has a passion for literature, poetry and drama
ANYONE WHO loves to read will remember the book, play or poem that first stopped them in their tracks. Sometimes we are lucky enough to stumble across it on a bookshelf. Others need a matchmaker – someone to consider us and say “this is the book for you”.
Niall MacMonagle enjoys nothing better than finding the right book for the right person; the one poem or story that will speak to the most book-shy of students. His colleagues say that, since he has read everything, he can always find the perfect work.
An English teacher in Wesley College for nearly 30 years, MacMonagle’s enthusiasm for teaching has never waned. His appetite for finding and sharing good writing ruffles the orthodoxy that the Leaving Certificate is a stultifying, dead-hand exam. It’s not perfect but, within it, at least one man has been able to inspire students for decades.
“He can convince even the most hardened cynic of the beauty of art and literature,” said a student of his from the 1980s. “He ignited passion, compassion and broadened our horizons,” said another.
So, how does Ireland’s best-known English teacher continue to excite students about poetry, literature and drama year after year with no sign of burn-out?
“There’s no limit to what he feels can be done to reach students. He brings artwork to class, he paints, he brings poets to speak to the students, gets the students to make postcards illustrating poetry,” said a colleague. His energy is daunting, said another who has worked with him. “He will read a novel, correct a pile of essays and write an article for the newspaper in the time it takes me to figure out a plan.”
MacMonagle’s desire to switch people on to art and literature has never confined itself to the Wesley classroom. His voice is familiar to radio listeners who get annual advice from him on the subject of sitting a good English paper.
He is regularly heard reviewing books on various arts programmes. He has an artist’s voice: even when he’s parsing time management strategies on English Paper 2 he manages to sound like he’s reciting poetry, as his mild Kerry accent carries the listener away. His voice is a salve in the June racket of hyped-up exam commentary.
MacMonagle's commitment to media is part of a wider effort to capture more souls for art: he has edited a number of books, some best-sellers, aimed at popularising poetry and literature for young and old. His best-known publication is Lifelines. What started as a class-made pamphlet in 1984 is now in its fourth manifestation and each version sells by the bucket load. Lifelinesis MacMonagle's ethos incarnate – linking people to poetry and exploring the magic that happens when a person engages with a work. He dreamed up the project in the context of the Ethiopian famine in 1984, as a way to raise money and inspire his students.
MacMonagle told students to find famous people and ask them for their favourite poem. It seemed like such an ambitious quest – a bunch of Irish teenagers on the hunt for Jeremy Irons, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller and Judy Dench, armed only with paper, pens and stamps. They sent out 80 letters and got 51 replies. Their letter to Mother Teresa, addressed simply “Calcutta, India”, was answered in 10 days.
His one person/one poem collection caught the imagination of the public and the scissors-and-glue artefact sold out in two days.
Last year the New and Collected Lifelineswas launched in the National Library, where many of the original written responses are still held. More than 650 people have contributed to the series since the first publication.
Lifelineswas a success because it connected real people to poetry. Comedian Graham Norton, a former pupil of MacMonagle's, launched the last edition and made his own contribution, choosing Patrick Kavanagh's Epicas his favourite. "One of the wisest poems I know," he wrote. "Whatever one is going through in life, it always helps to try and see it in perspective. Everything matters and doesn't matter in equal measure depending on where one stands. It seems to me that remembering this will keep you sane and help your happiness."
MacMonagle has been critical of the Leaving Cert English exam. Last year he called on the Department of Education to put an end to the “crazy gamble” of choosing poets for the Leaving, and just put them all on the exam, leaving the students to decide. Overall, though, he is a supporter of the Leaving Cert syllabus, said those who know him.
“He is a big fan of Shakespeare, and he loves poetry of all kinds so there is plenty on the Leaving Cert for him to love,” said a colleague. “He greatly welcomed the introduction, some years back, of the comparative text section which opened the syllabus up to film and a wider selection of literary works. As head of the department of English, he encourages teachers to try new texts, not just to repeat the same material year after year.”
This could be the key to MacMonagle’s zest for teaching.
Séamus Heaney is among the many poets MacMonagle has lured to Ballinteer to speak to his students.
MacMonagle's determination to find the right text for the right person goes on. Last year he published a book for transition year students called Texts, which features a variety of written works including letters, speeches, diaries and more traditional literary genres. The point of the work is to reach out to students with writing he thinks they might enjoy at a critical point in their growth and learning.
