POETRY: Maurice Harmonreviews Austin Clarke: Collected Poemsedited by R Dardis Clarke Carcanet with The Bridge Press, 573pp. £17.95
The Austin Clarke Collected Poemspublished by Dolmen Press in 1974 had some incorrect titles and typographical errors. In this new edition, the poet's son, Dardis Clarke, has corrected these mistakes and restored notes which had been omitted. The introduction by Christopher Ricks demonstrates the poet's skill in handling language and rhyme but in his discussion of the escape motif misses its pervasive implications.
Clarke was born in 1896 and raised aloft the following year to see Queen Victoria entering Dublin, and he died in March 1974, when Ireland had long since gained independence and had joined the European Common Market. As a young man he rubbed shoulders with writers of the Irish Literary Revival, attended George Russell's evenings, was taught by Douglas Hyde, one of the founders of the Gaelic League, and by the poet Thomas MacDonagh, who was executed for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916. As an aspiring poet he was influenced by WB Yeats and other poets of the Irish Literary Revival. He wrote epic narratives that drew upon Irish saga and myth and short musical lyrics that imitated the forms and rhyme schemes of Gaelic poetry.
His discovery of the Hiberno-Romanesque period marked the beginning of a new direction in his work. He moved from the pagan aristocratic world that had interested Yeats and explored the medieval world that had produced the Tara brooch and the Book of Kells. Pilgrimage(1929), affirms its attractions.
CLARKE KNEW THE bliss of being alive when Irish cultural nationalism inspired a generation, but his growing years were not entirely happy because of his mother's rigid morality, and because he was tormented by feelings of guilt and the fear of damnation. These conflicts may be sensed in the early poetry of escape but they appear openly in the self-confrontation of Night and Morning(1938). There he investigated the issue of the Catholic conscience that had not been addressed by the poetry of the Revival.
Night and Morningdeals with the conflict between the Church's insistence on obedience and the individual's need for personal freedom. Never before had an Irish poet dramatised the division with such power and understanding. On the one hand Clarke wants to be free, on the other he wants to remain within the communion of the faithful. The integrity and honesty of the voice are compelling.
This is the hour that we must mourn
With tallows on the black triangle,
Night has a napkin deep in fold
To keep the cup; yet who dare pray
If all in reason should be lost,
The agony of man betrayed
At every station of the cross?
In the pause after that agonising reappraisal, Clarke wrote verse plays in order to continue the tradition of poetic drama that Yeats had initiated. But then with the publication of Ancient Lights: Poems and Satires(1955), he re-emerged in energetic engagement with Church and State. The new poems pinpointed the callous treatment of unmarried mothers, the excessive punishment of children, the neglect of the poor, the self-importance of some clergy, and similar issues. Their moral base is affirmed in Ancient Lights, which identifies the moment when Clarke threw off the manacles of the church and put his faith in himself.
The sun came out, new smoke flew up,
The gutters of the Black Church rang
With services. Waste water mocked
The ballcocks: down-pipes
sparrowing,
Such swallowing in the air; such cowling
To keep high offices pure: I heard
From shore to shore, the iron gratings
Take half our heavens with a roar.
It is sometimes said that in the 1950s and 1960s people ignored the cruelty being meted out in reform schools and orphanages, in classrooms up and down the country.
Austin Clarke would not be silent. He is the conscience of his time. In Mother and Childhe mocks the Government's submission to Episcopal interference , in Three Poems about Childrenhe is angry when orphans are burnt to death in Co Cavan and furious at a bishop's unfeeling remark that the innocent children went straight to Heaven.
Burial of an Irish Protestantmocks the Church's prohibition on Catholics attending a Protestant service as it describes the ludicrous evasion of those who wait outside St Patrick's Cathedral instead of attending the funeral service for president Douglas Hyde.
Professors in cap and gown,
Costello, his Cabinet,
In Government cars, hiding
Around the corner,
YOU CAN MEASURE the work of a poet by its imaginative life, intellectual range, emotional truth, and engagement with personal, social and political matters. On such terms Clarke is a massive presence. You can take note of outstanding poems. By this measurement also Clarke's reputation is secure.
One can point to Pilgrimage, which celebrates the achievements of the Hiberno-Romanesque world, The Straying Student, which dramatises the clerical student's vision of the sensual woman, the magisterial Ancient Lights, the richly confessional The Loss of Strength, the turbulent psychodrama Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, several nature poems including the slimly elegant Japanese Print, or Martha Blake at 51.
Once, at a reading, Thomas Kinsella asked Clarke to read this poem. Clarke demurred, saying it was rather long, but Kinsella encouraged him with the remark that it was one of the great poems written since the death of Yeats. When Clarke had finished, Kinsella asked, "Who was Martha Blake?" to which the older poet replied, "My sister".
It was a stunning moment. Younger poets were accustomed to being confessional but here without fuss the older man had written a painfully honest and revealing portrait of his pious sister.
Austin Clarke is a master craftsman whose Collected Poemsbrings his work before us in all its range and variety, its strength and humanity. It confirms him as a major poet, a master of form and language, whose achievements cannot be ignored. He speaks of and to our confusion, pain and occasional joys.
• Maurice Harmon had two books out last year: the critical study Thomas Kinsella: Designing for the Exact Needsand his own poetry collection The Mischievous Boy and other poems