{"id":12405,"date":"2017-02-02T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=12405"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:30:17","slug":"cian-murphy-reviews-the-seasons-of-cullen-church-by-bernard-odonoghue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/cian-murphy-reviews-the-seasons-of-cullen-church-by-bernard-odonoghue\/","title":{"rendered":"Cian Murphy reviews ‘The Seasons of Cullen Church’ by Bernard O\u2019Donoghue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"27023-books-origjpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bernard O\u2019Donoghue says it is difficult to name a poetry book, because most are made up of \u2018bits and pieces\u2019. The Seasons of Cullen Church<\/em> is apt. It evokes both the passage of time and the intense attention to location found in O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s work. Previous collections have also taken place and time as titular concerns and the book finds foreshadows, too, of its strong elegiac themes.<\/p>\n

It is indicative of the richness of life in his childhood home of Cullen, and of O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s skill as an archaeologist, that he can still unearth so much from a place he left as a teenager. He returns, or tries to return, over and over. The title poem speaks of \u00e9migr\u00e9s, priests, \u2018returned \/ from California, Manchester or the Far East.\u2019 In \u2018Evacuee\u2019 it is the poet\u2019s \u2018Manchester mother\u2019 who yearns to go back across the Irish Sea. However, there is also a sense of displacement and isolation. We find it in \u2018Connolly\u2019s Bookshop\u2019, with Robinson Crusoe afloat on a sea of books, and in \u2018Underfoot\u2019, with its reference to Man Friday. And any frequent traveller will recognise the dislocation in \u2018First Night There\u2019.<\/p>\n

Quiet devastations abound. There are no \u2018ta-daa\u2019 moments – O\u2019Donoghue prefers a gentle reveal of the complexity of lives that are, like fractals, more intricate the closer we look at them. In \u2018Specific Gravity\u2019 a brief meditation on science breaks into elegy as a man on a mountaintop hopes that the \u2018sea wind \/ might drain all trace of fluid from the eyes\u2019. \u2018The Din Beags\u2019 tells of the macabre burial of a horse in frozen ground. And \u2018The Thaw\u2019 inverts a familiar motif to seek a return to \u2018human cold\u2026 packed in ice\u2019 to preserve a relationship.<\/p>\n

There is an ever-present sense of loss. The Seasons<\/em> closes with a snippet of translation to acknowledge a loss that is public, professional and, perhaps for O\u2019Donoghue, also personal. In \u2018The Boat\u2019, for Seamus Heaney, O\u2019Donoghue recalls that the righteous man is \u2018safe and sound \/ as long as he stays within the boat\u2019s timbers.\u2019 The poem is not showy but showcases what the dedicatee once described as the \u2018craft\u2019 and \u2018technique\u2019 of the poet. The metre and line breaks rock us down the page. But any attempt to rush will see the reader stumble. The poem is a reminder that balance is dynamic, that to be upright we must not be still, but in steady motion.<\/p>\n

In \u2018From Piers Plowman<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 an earlier translation from the poem behind \u2018The Boat\u2019 – O\u2019Donoghue vaunts \u2018the magical world \/ That I haven\u2019t the time or the skill to describe\u2019. But it is not so. Although O\u2019Donoghue revels in the ordinary he also offers the extraordinary. There is the majestic beauty, most of all in \u2018Swifts\u2019, in which the poet recalls<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the shearwaters who were all around us<\/p>\n

one mystic Skellig midnight, souls returned<\/p>\n

from their other, closed life deep out at sea.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The near-mythological imagery of this island, and the religious overtones of several of the poems, bridge any thematic gap between ordinary life in Cullen and the extraordinary found in the collection\u2019s translations from Dante and Virgil.<\/p>\n

The late Geoffrey Hill wrote that a poem ought to be a \u2018sad and angry consolation\u2019. If there is anger in O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s poetry, then it is a quiet one, a defiance of any temptation to be impulsive in the face of our losses. \u2018The Boat\u2019 can be read as a reflection on the life of the poet. This was a preoccupation of the dedicatee and can also be found elsewhere in The Seasons<\/em> in \u2018You Know the Way\u2019. In a Frostian equivocation over the path chosen the poet wonders \u2018how far the decision will take you from the straight and narrow\u2019. Elsewhere, in \u2018Stigma\u2019, the poet quizzes his preoccupation with \u2018Con\u2019s shaky bike\u2019 in Cullen amidst the \u2018poverties of our present time\u2019. Perhaps these returns to home ground keep O\u2019Donoghue within the boat\u2019s timbers \u2013 safe from the stormier waters of current affairs.<\/p>\n

But for all the loss and self-doubt here there is also consolation. O\u2019Donoghue connects the present to what has gone before to remind us that seasons return. It is his particular gift to do so with images of humanity at its most plain and in a poetry that sits amongst the gentlest music of Ireland\u2019s lyrical tradition. These poems, and the consolation they offer, are therefore vital, both because of their necessity, and because they concern themselves with the very essence of life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cian Murphy<\/strong> is from Cork and lives in London where he teaches at university. Envoi<\/em> will publish his poetry in October of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernard O\u2019Donoghue says it is difficult to name a poetry book, because most are made up of \u2018bits and pieces\u2019. The Seasons of Cullen Church is apt. It evokes both the passage of time and the intense attention to location found in O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s work. Previous collections have also taken place and time as titular concerns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12409,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12405\/revisions\/12409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}