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Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘An honesty like no other': Padraic Fiacc's legacy recognised in his Belfast birthplace
Padraic Fiacc's poetry – visceral, often troubling, lastingly powerful – offers us an unforgettable series of visions of Belfast , but has not to date received the attention it is due. Now, the link between the writer and the city is commemorated in an Ulster History Circle Blue Plaque at Falls Road Library, close to Fiacc's birthplace, Elizabeth Street. It was unveiled earlier this week in a ceremony marking Fiacc's contribution to Irish letters, and his enduring importance as a subversive voice that still echoes today. It is fitting that this recognition should arrive now. Last year marked the centenary of Fiacc's birth: born Patrick Joseph O'Connor (in his own words, 'into the Civil War … when they were just making Northern Ireland'), the poet lived through extraordinary times. At the age of five he moved from Belfast to New York with his family, against the backdrop of the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression. (Later, Paul Muldoon produced two BBC documentaries about Fiacc's time in the United States, Hell's Kitchen and Atlantic Crossing.) He lived there through the second World War before coming back to Belfast, where he was witness to the Troubles: the conflict that would become a central preoccupation in his work, of which he remains one of our foremost chroniclers. But it was in New York that he had begun to write, dabbling in fiction and playwrighting, and writing poetry under the tutelage of Padraic Colum, a leading figure in the Irish Revival (and the inspiration for his eventual pseudonym). Fiacc's Old Poet depicts the two 'arguing about El Greco and de Valera' on a walk around Central Park, Colum figured as a savant who had, in his turn, 'strolled the streets of Dublin with James Joyce … With a voice could be Daniel Corkery / Said what Yeats said what the best said / 'Dig in the garden of Ireland, write of your own.'' Fiacc took that advice, returning again and again, in his early work, to the imaginative horizon represented by his country of birth. His was an immigrant's sensibility, and in his poetry, readers find both a longing for and suspicion of 'home'. On his return to Belfast in 1946, Fiacc found another mentor, one who would profoundly influence his thinking: the novelist, short story writer and teacher Michael McLaverty. Letters between the pair, archived in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, illustrate something of the strength of their bond: Fiacc writes to McLaverty that he 'used to cry when I would read your books in college because my heart was home'. (Among other influences he discusses with McLaverty are Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Gogol, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, suggesting the breadth of his literary interests.) READ MORE As Seamus Heaney would in Fosterage ('He discerned / The lineaments of patience everywhere / And fostered me and sent me out, with words / Imposing on my tongue like obols.'), Fiacc paid tribute to McLaverty with North Man, published in his first full-length collection, By the Black Stream: 'Along the evening Lagan we / Walking the broken dream under the bent bough, / Stop to adhere to the birds, / Known and named, as if by Adam, by you, / Creating poetry without words / Building silence like a house.' It was through McLaverty that Fiacc met Heaney, and he lived and worked alongside other leading lights in the city, among them his neighbour in the suburbs, Derek Mahon. Indeed, Mahon's poem Glengormley, with its famous last line – 'By / Necessity, if not choice, I live here too.' – was originally (aptly) dedicated to the other poet. As the political situation in the North deteriorated throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Irish poets faced a mounting pressure to respond to the violence that was breaking out around them, searching for new forms adequate to their predicament, to redirect a phrase from Heaney's eventual Nobel lecture. Fiacc's strategy was to further develop the jagged, raw style that had always characterised his poetry, with its fusion of traditionalism and modernism. As a child of civil war, his fascination with the poetry of violence had been apparent from the very beginnings of his career; in those letters to McLaverty, he outlined 'the method' he would continue to use in his writing: 'to expose the wound in man then to cauterise it without too abstract a style to neutralise or act as an anaesthesia in hope that the grief catharsis will act antidote to the poison'. [ Poet of the Troubles – Oliver O'Hanlon on Padraic Fiacc Opens in new window ] The results were poems that retain their ability to shock and disturb, poems like Glass Grass with its harrowing opening description of 'The scorched-cloth smell of burnt flesh / From morning, a bomb in one of the parked cars, / The gulls, glinting like ice on asphalt in April, / The sun, in a smog of cheap petrol exhaust / Fumes'. Or Intimate Letter 1973: 'Our Paris part of Belfast has / Decapitated lampposts now. Our meeting / Place, the Book Shop, is a gaping / Black hole of charred timber.' 'My fellow poets call my poems 'cryptic, crude, dis / -tasteful, brutal, savage, bitter …',' Fiacc wrote, and it is true that his poetry (and work as editor of the controversial 1974 anthology The Wearing of the Black: An Anthology of Contemporary Ulster Poetry) attracted virulent criticism from his fellow poets and critics alike, perceived as too challenging, too 'hysterical' (an accusation that was levelled often), essentially, altogether too much . [ Photographs of Padraic Fiacc, the poet of the Troubles Opens in new window ] But the poetry attracted its champions too, notably the late Gerald Dawe and Aodán Mac Póilin, who in the 1990s published a selection of his work, Ruined Pages, and made great strides in introducing his work to a wider audience. By the time of Fiacc's death, in Belfast, in January 2019, he had become something of a cult figure. President Michael D Higgins noted that the poet's 'portrayal of the Troubles was stark and revealed an honesty like no other … Padraic Fiacc leaves a legacy of particular intensity.' This legacy is now made visible in the place where Fiacc's journey began, on the Falls Road, but his influence extends much further still.
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Padraic Fiacc: Blue plaque unveiled in Belfast to poet of the Troubles
His work captured some of Northern Ireland's darkest years, but Padraic Fiacc's poetry has been largely Wednesday admirers of his work unveiled a blue plaque commemorating him, which they hope will put his life and work back in the public plaque was unveiled at Falls Road Library for the Belfast-born writer who was celebrated in the US and at home for stark and compassionate poems that focused on the violence of the Troubles. The Ulster History Circle, supported by Libraries NI, led the ceremony close to Fiacc's birthplace. "He'll forever be on the wall and back in the room," said Seamus McKee, from Ulster History Circle, who unveiled the plaque. Paul Muldoon, a poet himself, was among the visitors to the library to witness the plaque being expressed his excitement about the influence Fiacc had on the literary world."Padraig was a true poet, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head," he Muldoon collaborated with Fiacc when the worked at the Muldoon created two programmes, one exploring Fiacc's childhood in Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's west side in New York, and another about crossing the Atlantic by ship."I believe Padraic would be very pleased with today," he said."Like many poets, no matter how famous, there's always a lingering sense that they're not receiving the recognition they deserve." Born Patrick Joseph O'Connor near the Falls Road in west Belfast, he moved to New York in 1929 when he was five. They settled in Hell's Kitchen, a neighbourhood troubled by social problems and gang later met the poet Padraic Colum, who was living in New York and inspired him to embrace his Irish heritage. The name Colum derives from the Irish word for homage, Padraic took on the name Fiacc, meaning writings often incorporate themes of birds and the natural moved back to Belfast in 1946, took on various jobs, and then returned to New York for about a decade before finally settling in Glengormley with his wife at the time, Nancy. Aine Andrews and her husband were friends with Fiacc since the early 1970s, following the murder of one of his friends and the breakup of his marriage. "I hope the unveiling of the blue plaque will capture people's attention and inspire them to revisit Padraic's work with renewed interest," she said."I believe the creation of the blue plaque would successfully draw their focus." Seamus McKee said a significant part of Fiacc's life was marked by being "shunned by some of his fellow poets" who considered his work too raw, leaving him lonely for much of his life. However, in his later years, people began to recognise and appreciate his described him as "raw, immediate, and very honest" and said his poetry stood out as he spoke when others remained silent."There is such a wave of support for Fiacc," Mr McKee said, adding that many people had advocated for the plaque."He had a brilliant sense of humour, combining New York and Belfast wit."I wish he could be here today to hear all the wonderful things being said." While Fiacc was celebrated in the US as well as in Northern Ireland, he faced criticism at home for his poems that looked unwaveringly at received the AE Russell Award for Woe to the Boy, the Poetry Ireland award and was elected to Irish arts association Aosdána.
Belfast Telegraph
4 days ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Troubles poet to be honoured with plaque at Falls Road Library
Belfast poet Padraic Fiacc, who won widespread acclaim but was criticised at home for his stark portrayal of violence and suffering, is to be commemorated with an Ulster History Circle Blue Plaque on Falls Road Library, not far from where he was born.
