Skip to main content

Featured Poet: Martin Mooney

Eyewear is very glad to feature Martin Mooney (pictured) this Sunday, on the eve of his reading for the Oxfam Poetry Series in London on July 4.  I first met Mooney in Belfast, in 1987, introduced to him by Medbh McGuckian, and we struck up a friendship.  Corresponding trans-Atlantic by letter in the days before email, we put together an anthology of contemporary poets from the North, which was launched in March 1988, in Montreal during a conference on Irish writing.  Martin came over for the launch for a few weeks, staying with me.  It was an exciting time - Paul Durcan, Terry Eagleton, and Michael Longley were there, as well as Senator David Norris.  We were the cover story of a Montreal daily paper.  I was not yet 22, Martin was around 24 or 25. On one of the last days of his visit we drove across to the border to Burlington and met Paul Muldoon for Chinese food, after a reading he had done.


After that, we fell out of touch, and went our separate ways.  He went on to become an arts administrator, civil servant, creative writing teacher, and publican.  He also wrote short fiction, reviews, and for the theatre.  Life happened.  In 2009 I read his third collection, and was pleased to see he still had the touch that had so inspired me when I was a younger poet - Martin taught me much about Irish and British poetry, and argued for the value of Wordsworth.  My poetry since the late 80s has been strongly influenced by Irish poetry, especially that from the North.  Anyway, enough about me.  I am very glad he will be reading from his excellent fourth collection, The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen, for the series I run.


Mooney's poetry remains a touchstone for me - it is highly-intelligent, especially sensitive to politics and history (he has a fondness for Cold War images and communist references), weather (he likes snow), the local, and, adds to this a strong sense of craft, subtle music, and humour.  He's one of the best Irish poets writing under the age of 50.  Below find a few of my favourite poems from his latest book.



Moscow Road

In the cold light of spring it’s a photograph
from Picture Post: factories, gasometers.
Moscow Road is cutting a swathe

through wetlands towards a horizon of cranes
and windsocks, of cargo ships. There’s
been a light drift of snow and the Nissen

huts are sugared with it. Nothing moves,
until a turboprop comes in to land and scares
a single pearl-grey heron from the reed-beds.

It beats past Bauhaus offices, a refugee,
a ghost from the show trials, over our heads:
ration-books, industry, the war years.


Portrait of a young nobleman holding a lemur
for Janice

Conspirator, swordsman, amateur poet,
his pet on its silver chain has the skinniest arms
and widest eyes in the whole chateau.

Blind-looking, feral glamour stares and stares
at something you can’t see. Imagine
fur and weeping scullions, maps of the wars.

They don’t, as a rule, live long. What will he do
when its brittle bones are buried in the keep?
Who will he find to talk to? How will he sleep?

poems by Martin Mooney; reprinted from The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen; with permission of the author.

Comments

Ian Acheson said…
Hello,
I've accidentally come across and have been hugely impressed by Martin's work. I've not come across a contemporary poet recently who writes about the Loyalist experience so well. I have a blog:

www.legitimatetangent.blogspot.com

Called 51% British

I've attempted to write (20 poems) largely but not exclusively about the experience of Protestants living on the Fermanagh border. I'm a full time Civil Servant and have no delusions about my technical or emotional literacy but these poems have had some decent feedback. I'd dearly love to have some more. Please visit and let me know what you think. And apologies for this wee 'trojan horse.' But I genuinely did like Martin's work!

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".