INTRODUCTION TO FOOL'S GOLD
Here is the Introduction to my poetry collection, Fool's Gold (Revival Press, 2019) by poet John Liddy. The cover image is by renowned artist, John Shinnors and the work is illustrated by esteemed artist, Kate Hennessy. The collection was described by poet John W. Sexton (who launched the book) as, "Limerick poured out." Certainly a collaborative work! Thanks to all involved.
Introduction
This is Kieran Beville’s homecoming book of poems with
memories of a Limerick childhood, paeans to his mother and father, the young
poet’s developing years before branching out into the world where we meet his
own family, the pain of separation, his religious and mystical self and the
scars of life’s hard lessons prospecting for gold. The poems endure as physical
and spiritual signposts on the poet’s journey back to his roots.
We are invited in to Beville’s Limerick through
MATINÉE AT THE SAVOY, with its cult films of the time, BUTTER DISH, a reminder
of a deeply felt loss, the moving homage to his brother Michael in STILL-LIFE,
the masterful use of nature in the homage to his father in The MASTER GARDENER
and SWIMMING PALS; innocence giving way to maturity in ON THE WAY TO CHURCH,
which is worth quoting in full:
Mother knelt to tie my
shoelace,
auburn hair glowing in the sun.
Fingers swiftly knitting a knot.
With upturned, smiling face she leaned to kiss me
but I withdrew,
too old to welcome it,
too young to tie my shoe.
But the journey home is not just about childhood
places and family memories; it also requires a sort of cleansing, a facing up
to love-loss and separation, both personal and spiritual, the children he
fathered and the poet’s reasons for writing poems, his search for inner peace.
I was particularly struck by the title poem FOOL’S GOLD which reveals, amongst
other revelations, Beville’s relationship with the poem:
For poetry I am but a
fool
who hacks until he
finds a jewel.
FRAGILE, with its precise, emotive description of
moving house, is much more than a list. It conveys a heart-felt account of
separation:
A cigar of carpet.
An honest mirror.
A clutter of pots and
pans.
A suitcase of sacred stuff.
A clatter of cutlery.
An empty vase.
….
A last look at what is lost.
Nothing left to retrieve.
Impossible to calculate the cost.
CEDAR OF LEBANON shows the fusion of two cultures and
the musician in Beville’s oeuvre with the musicality of the lines:
I thought I heard the
cedar sing,
a sirocco song in the
humid night
strummed by wind and hummed by sultans
a harmony that made the willow weep.
And the artist/painter in MAKING RAINBOWS with its
colourful brush strokes in the pining for smells and memories of home.
A distant moment of
delight
refracting hues of happiness
in shards of broken light.
Love and love-loss, colour and sound, the language of
flowers are never too far from the poet’s pen as in THE RAVEN when he scatters
his hurts ‘on the ground’ for ‘they are little sorrows/that the sparrows gather
round’ or INCONSOLABLY BLUE and his symbolic use of laburnum, camellia, white
and purple heather, yellow poppy, phlox, geranium, begonia, clematis and that
bulb flower montbretia as ‘they argue into the fading light/but they still
sleep together in the night’ or the SONG OF SORROW itself where we are treated
to:
A bog-soft bed beneath
my bones
beckons me to rest –
A fog-filled field of
ghostly calm.
A haunting in my
breast.
The mystical TWILIGHT TREES, WARRIOR AT A BROOK and
WHISPERING WINDS show Beville’s earlier interest in faiths and beliefs that he
found outside his Walls of Limerick and the poems to his children, now adults,
bring this book full circle along with the final poem PICKING MUSHROOMS, that
very popular Limerick custom.
I was left with the pleasant feeling that the poet has
prospected some real gold, his sense of humour and irony intact and that the
homecoming is but another beginning.
John Liddy
1 August, 2019
Madrid.
Comments
Post a Comment