Poetry, like maths, caused me no end of grief when I was at school. It was a chore. it was boring. It was homework. I neither saw nor appreciated the possible truth, beauty or life in it. My only interest in poets concerned which ones would come up on the English exam paper.
We went over old papers to see if we could establish a pattern: Yeats hadn't been on for two years; he must be due again. Or Kavanagh - when was he up last? To this day, I can mindlessly chant, word for word, Yeats's The Ballad of Father Gilligan. It was "learn it or else".
Similarly, disjointed lines come into my head from time to time and, instead of saying "what's up?" to a troubled-looking spouse, I might easily ask: "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?" I remember single lines of some works and chunks of others. I don't, though, remember them fondly. I hated particularly the poems that didn't scan or rhyme: it was much easier to memorise something that had a pattern, the last word of the first couplet providing a possible mnemonic for the second.
Now and then, though, I'd glimpse a notion or emotion that would hit me somewhere in the solar plexus and maybe even cause a lump in the throat
- but I'd dismiss it quickly. A poetic philistine. That was me.
Well, that's changed. Changed utterly, maybe. I have had an epiphany of sorts. I am no longer afraid of poetry. I have achieved a state of open-minded receptiveness and have realised that poetry comes in many valid forms and that poetic licence is just that - a licence to employ any means or method to convey the thought, to establish the connection, to hit the solar plexus.
The change started about a year ago when I became a "facilitator" for two library-based reading groups. (I'm reluctant to call them book clubs lest any parallel be drawn with the Channel 4 programme of that name. There definitely isn't one. We're very tame and we keep our clothes on.) We meet once a month, discuss last month's book and take away another one to read, digest and discuss at the next session.
A year on, we're getting adventurous and have started tackling different kinds of books. We've recently did a play reading. I knew it would be only a matter of time before poetry raised its head above the parapet and I'd have to do something about it. I felt I'd be fraudulent as a facilitator to these honest people with my poetic narrow-mindedness so, before launching them into the realm of poetry, I started to revisit my old schoolbooks (why do I still have them?) and explore poetic pastures new.
One new pasture recently visited was the "Out to Lunch" series of poetry readings at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre in Foster Place, Dublin. The half-hour sessions, now in their fifth year, are open to all, free of charge. Last year saw the publication of an anthology featuring poets who had participated since the readings started in 1998.
Barry O'Kelly, social and cultural affairs officer with the Bank of Ireland, describes "Out to Lunch" as a series that "gives a platform to new poets to air their work. For many people, poetry was dead boring at school and we want to get away from that notion."I went along for the March reading, by Trish Casey from Cobh. At first glance, it promised to be a conventional poetry reading - there was a lone stool placed at the top of the room. On further inspection though, my eyebrow raised. There were other items placed strategically around the stage area - a leather belt, a pair of candlesticks complete with candles, a chiffon scarf, a toy gun, a selection of hats. John McNamee, himself a poet and writer, is the series organiser. He described the poet of the day to me as being "young and new with fresh ideas, which is what we need". He introduced her from the podium and I watched the door beside the stage for her to emerge. It remained closed.
Instead, I heard singing coming from somewhere near the back of the auditorium. "I love you, you love me. We're a happy family." The poet came singing and whizzing through the room in her bare feet on a child's scooter. She scooted up to the front and started reciting a poem about marital break-up from a child's perspective. It dealt the opening blow to the solar plexus.
What followed was literally poetry in motion. This diminutive woman, clad all in black, exuded life and energy. She knelt between the lighted candles, arms aloft, with a black chiffon scarf draped over her head and half sang, half chanted a lament for abused children; she poked the gun into her pants as she recited a poem about war.
Yes, her themes were dark, but she spoke in the vernacular of her characters which sometimes lent an incidental humour. A child gleefully repeats what she overheard her grandmother saying about the break-up of a marriage: "Granny says 'it's an awful f----- mess' but I'm not allowed to say f------." At the end of the session, the lone stool had been little used and my solar plexus had taken a bashing.
So I feel a good deal more excited now about the concept of poetry. It's not the narrow, "learn it or else" medium I believed it to be. I'm not saying I'll like it all, but at least I'll give it a chance.
Next up in the "Out to Lunch" series is Kevin Kiely on April 4th, followed by Patricia Nolan on May 9th and Hayley Fax-Roberts on June 13th. The readings continue until December and other poets featured include Alan Titley and Gerald Dawe.