Irish Poems on the Underground
This week I launched an anthology of poetry entitled Poems on the Underground, published by Penguin Books and edited by Judith Chernaik, Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert.
I am delighted to be associated with Poems on the Underground for two reasons. First, as part of the 150th anniversary of the birth of WB Yeats, Ireland's strong poetic tradition is being showcased at present on the London Underground through works by WB Yeats, Augusta Gregory, Louis McNeice, Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan. I am delighted that London's commuters are able to enjoy the best of Irish poetry while making their way to and from work each day. I am sure that Yeats's words: 'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams' will resonate strongly at rush hour!
Aside from its present focus on Ireland, Poems on the Underground, a project that started life in 1986, does wonderful work in promoting poetry to the widest and most diverse audience possible.
Why should poetry be made available on the Tube? My answer is that our civilisation is based on words. Words express our values, frame our laws, tell our stories and reveal our emotions. There is a vast treasure trove of words (expertly combined with the writers’ creative gift) in humanity’s shared literary locker. There are great novels that bring to life engrossing characters and absorbing stories. There are our great dramatic works that have enthralled audiences over the centuries. There are many memorable poems that embed themselves in our memories. Testifying to the power of words, WB Yeats wrote in one of his early poems that ‘words alone are certain good.'
Poetry has, I would say, a particular value in that it presents human experience in a condensed literary form. This present selection of verses featured on Poems on the Underground makes, I would say, a compelling case for poetry. For anyone who sees poetry as obscure, impenetrable and remote from everyday life, this collection offers an eloquent riposte.
What, for example, about this line from the poet, Sappho:
As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree
I am rocked by my love.
There is nothing obscure or obtuse about those lines - and these sentiments were written down by a Greek woman in the 7th century BC, thus powerfully underlining the constancy of human experience.
The poets represented in this anthology come from many countries and from various epochs of human history. There are works by Chaucer ('Now welcome summer with thy sun soft'), Shakespeare ('Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang') and Shelley ('Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory') to name but three of the major English poets represented.
In reading this collection, the Irish poets represented there naturally caught my attention – Yeats (‘Earth in beauty dressed/Awaits returning spring’, Heaney ('in drifts of sleep I came upon you/Buried to your waist in snow'), Kavanagh ('The birds sang in the wet trees'), Eavan Boland ('Like oil lamps we put them out the back/of our houses, of our minds’), Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin ('And the apple-blossom is allowed to wither on the bough'), Michael Longley (‘The wind is playing an orchestra of harmonicas’), John F. Deane (‘there is a vast sky wholly dedicated to the stars’), Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (‘I place my hope on the water/in this little boat/of the language’), Paul Muldoon (‘An old pit pony walks/its chalks/across a blasted heath’) and Paula Meehan ('I bless the power of seed/ its casual, useful persistence ... /and thank my stars the winter’s ended').
Among the Irish works in the anthology, I especially like Derek Mahon's poem, J.P. Dunleavy's Dublin where
... the weeks go by
Like birds; and the years, the years
Fly past anti-clockwise
Like clock hands in a bar mirror.
This is an enjoyable, enlightening collection that deserves a wide readership. It's also small enough to carry to work and read on those London tube carriages (or on Dublin’s Dart or Luas) that do not display posters from Poems on the Underground.
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London