Hear No Evil?

Is this who we are, now?  On Wednesday, a horse was found dead in Darndale Park.  The horse had been tortured, disembowelled, its ears and anus gone.  A reward has been offered for information.

Did no one hear anything? That horse would have screamed.  There would have been panic, hooves drumming the ground for escape from the thing that held – him? her? – by the halter.  It would have taken more than one person to subdue the frantic animal for the mutilation.  Whatever else that cruel assault may have been, it would not have been silent.

A thing that struck me about the rescue of the kidnapped women in Ohio, earlier this month, was that it was lucky for Amanda Berry that the man who heard her scream and came to break his neighbour’s door down to get her out was the type to get involved.  There are many who would have looked the other way, many who might have re-considered later, who might even have made an anonymous call to the police – but there’s no telling if such a delayed call would have led to the release of the women, or to more beatings, or even to murder. There was a moment for action, one single moment, to be seized or lost.  Those moments pass quickly.

We live on a fold of rock at the city’s edge.  We hear things, at night,  especially in summer, when the dark is thin and sounds seep through. Night terrors.  Small animals being taken.  The eerie, stolen-baby cries of vixens, the screams of frogs.  In summer, there are parties on the beaches and on the hills as well as in the gardens.  There are cycles of destructiveness – to cars, to houses, to trees.   There are rows. Accusation.  Challenge.  Weeping. It can be difficult to pinpoint the exact place where these things are happening – did that glass break one street away? Two? But they spend themselves, the arguments.  Friends intervene.  The young people go home.  Every time, I listen and wonder, is this the time to intervene? To do what? Am I missing something that may turn out, later, to be a clue?

In a local murder, many years ago, a neighbour heard a scream, and dismissed it.  Later, the timing of that scream became a feature of the pleas for information. It was an anchor, of sorts, in the investigation, one known thing in a violent fog of confusion.  The thing is, if that was you, how would you live with it, the doing nothing?  Would you have been brave enough to admit to it, after?

There’s an instant when a scream leaps inside us, a creature calling to be saved. An echo marks the place where it was taken. Sometimes we’re powerless, sometimes we don’t recognize what we hear until too late. We might be indifferent, for reasons of our own.  We’d do well to remember that, left unchallenged, whatever’s out there doing its lethal work – the thing we turn away from – sooner or later, that thing will come for us.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/reward-of-5-000-offered-after-horse-disemboweled-1.1396421

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/5000-reward-offered-for-arrest-in-grotesque-horsecruelty-case-29274140.html

An egg is not a bird. A seed is not a tree.

One of many things that enrage me about what passes for rational debate about abortion in Ireland is the way language is being corrupted and debased – mostly, I’d argue, on the anti-choice side. Politicians, bishops, academics and lawyers – all of whom understand absolutely what they are doing – don’t flicker so much as an eyelid when they substitute highly charged words for truth.  They’ve been getting away with this for far too long.

As soon as particular terms are introduced to any discussion, we know which side the speaker is on and scurry to take up our positions, so far apart we have to yell to be heard. And we’re all yelling in code, which makes no sense to anyone, not really. Pithy one-word insults and slogans make handy weapons in that sort of battle. ‘Baby-killer’, is one such term.  ‘Bigot’ is another.  When these poisoned darts appear on the horizon, everyone dives for cover in their own thicket, which may be confused, brambly, and uncomfortable, but is, at least, familiar. We’re not likely to get disturbed too much in there.

Maybe that’s why we do the name-calling and the yelling; maybe we don’t want to hear each other. We’re so hell-bent on steamrolling our own argument over the line to victory that we forget what language is for: communication, understanding, enlarging our perception of the world. Instead it’s being turned against itself.  Loud scary people turn sentences inside out, then apply a bit of heat and a lot of volume to make a big loud scary bang that will cause the rest of us to cover our ears, shut our eyes, and hum the mantra England, to calm ourselves down.  Because, if England wasn’t there, or wasn’t quite so accessible, how different would this conversation have to be?  Might we actually have to face the complexities of the question and deal with it, like actual, rational adults?

On one side of the argument, we have people who believe that all forms of human life are sacred and have absolute claims on our protection from the moment of conception.  [It’s worth saying that even the Catholic Church didn’t always hold this view.  There was a time when the penance for having an abortion was less than that for an unmarried woman having a baby (thanks a lot, guys!)] On the other side, we have people who believe that a zygote is not a person, an embryo is not a person, and even a foetus is not yet a person, although as a pregnancy progresses these waters get murkier and murkier.  To be pro-choice is to believe that the needs of individuals who already inhabit the world have a prior claim on our concern.  There’s a painful, difficult conversation to be had about late-term abortion, but that conversation won’t even begin so long as we’re all clinging to our absolutes.  As the placard says, the range of pro-choice views are too nuanced, complex and delicate to fit on a placard (or even in a blog).

There’s a tyranny in the anti-choice position that rarely gets articulated. An individual can recognize the ethical complexities of abortion – she might even believe that she herself would never have one (and hope she never finds herself in a situation where she has to) – and still allow other women the right to make their own moral choices in keeping with their own highly personal (and no-one else’s business) dilemmas.  In other words, the pro-choice position allows other people the right to make up their own minds.  The anti-choice position doesn’t. (See Martina Devlin:  ”For the Record: It’s possible to be pro-choice and in favour of life” http://shar.es/lQXy1  in the Independent 9th May 2013) There’s a peculiarly Irish irony in TDs bleating for a free vote on the legislation. They want to be allowed to obey the dictates of their consciences in order to stop women being able to exercise theirs.

As for the interventions of the bishops – please. Do we really have to listen to the Catholic hierarchy lecturing us on sexual morality or child protection?  They have such a spectacularly blameless record in those departments.

Every Child a Wanted Child

(Here’s the full version of a piece published in the Comment section of the Independent last Saturday 04/05/13. It’s a personal contribution to the current conversation about abortion legislation in Ireland.)

Every Child a Wanted Child

When I was 17 I was raped by an older man I knew. We were at a party. He gave me cocktails, fun to look at and easy to drink.  I wasn’t used to drinking and drank too many, too fast. He offered to bring me home, but once I was in his car he brought me somewhere else instead.  I thought that night would never end, but morning came, as it does, and he let me go.

You probably have opinions about whether an experience like that constitutes rape or not, and that, right there, is one of the reasons I didn’t tell anyone what had happened to me.  I had those confusions too. I blamed myself enough to satisfy the entire nation, and then some.  But I’m not here to write about rape,  I’m here to write about what happened next.

I bled for three days, but kept it hidden. I didn’t look for help because I was humiliated and ashamed and because I didn’t have words for what had happened to me. In any case, because I was 17 and no-one had ever told me otherwise, I thought I deserved the damage. And I really, really, really did not want anyone to know. No amount of hot baths or pumice-stones could wash the memory of that night away, or scrub the reek of it from my skin.

On top of all that, I was afraid I might be pregnant.  There was no doubt in my mind that if I was, I’d have an abortion. I wouldn’t have told anyone that, either.

I didn’t want to have an abortion, but I knew that a pregnancy from that night would destroy me. I needed to scrape every trace of the experience off me, root it out from every pore and crevice.  I’d have bathed in acid if I thought it would scour my body clean and free.  The only thing that kept me sane in those first few days was thinking I had the option of abortion. I’d been stupid at that party, but I was savvy enough in other ways.  I knew where to look for information, how to get out of the country, where to borrow the money I would have lied to get.  I was the opposite of proud of myself, making these plans, but I was desperate to wrest my body back from the force that had stolen it.

Would I have been suicidal, if I’d been pregnant and unable to end that pregnancy? I think it’s likely. My revulsion and loathing – self-loathing and the other kind – were so strong, I’d have done anything, and I do mean anything, to escape them.  Lucky for me, there was no pregnancy.  When the waiting was over and I knew for sure, I took a deep breath and got on with my life, more or less.

A wanted pregnancy, in very different circumstances, was a revelation to me in all its physical and emotional intensity.  It was the most extraordinarily intimate and powerful experience I’d ever known. It was obvious and secret, ordinary and sacred, banal and deeply thrilling, all at once.  There was magic in it.  Every day I felt its power grow and embed itself more deeply in every cell of my body. You might think this would convince me that abortion was absolutely wrong, but it had the opposite effect.  It convinced me that no one has the right to force that intensity on anyone who doesn’t want it, or isn’t ready for it.  I couldn’t begin to imagine the nightmare of going through such seismic physical and emotional changes against my will.

I didn’t want to have an abortion, when I was 17, but I would have done it if I had to, to save myself.  I think that sentence is at the heart of the current arguments about legislating for suicidal feelings.  The argument as to whether abortion can be a valid treatment for a psychiatric condition is a distraction.  There’s a big difference between mental illness and the suicidal feelings a person might have in response to an overwhelming situation.

In the early stages of pregnancy there are two lives in the balance, but one of them is a potential life; it can only become viable over time and at the expense of the other.  Only that mother knows what the cost to her will be and whether she can afford it or not.

I defy anyone, male or female, to look my 17 year old self in the eye and tell her that they feel personally entitled to deny her the right to regain control of her own body, that they will force her to endure an extension of that rape for the sake of their world-view.  But that’s what it means to pass laws that frame the kinds of restrictions our legislature are discussing right now.  Where will the pundits and the politicans or the panels of experts be during the long, frightened nights and days of an unwanted pregnancy, or during the storms of labour?  Will they be the ones to cope with the consequences, to the mothers, to the children, to the families? Will they be the ones to mind those babies, bring up those children, minute by minute, day by day, year on year?

Abortion is a highly-charged, difficult subject.  It sparks so much passion, fury and hatred that many women are afraid to speak out privately, let alone in public.  I was afraid to write this.  But on balance, I think I’m more afraid of living in a country where I’m afraid to say what I believe and why.

10th Annual Conference of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI)

10th Annual Conference of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI).

10th Annual Conference of the Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI)

The 10^th Annual Conference of AEDEI, the Spanish Association for Irish Studies, was hosted by the University of Oviedo this year.  When did academic conferences become so friendly?  I don’t think I’ve ever been with a group of people so willing to strike up a conversation with the person who happens to be standing next to them, or so inclusive.

The range of papers was impressive, spanning literature (18^th century to the present),  politics, film and television, theatre.  We’re all indebted to these scholars for their attention to the work of contemporary Irish writers, and for their refusal to be corraled into the safe, familiar shapes of  the ‘canon’.  There were papers about Teresa Deevy and Shevawn Lynam as well as Joseph O’Neill, Martin McDonagh, Emer Martin, Éilís Ni Dhuibhne, Anne Enright … and many others.

http://www.unioviedo.es/aedei11/AEDEI_2011Final_Programme_website.pdf

Someone once asked me, what’s the point of  literary criticism?  At this conference I was reminded of its unique value:  like reading itself, it reminds us to slow down, to pay attention to detail, to focus on the world we’re in.  It’s strong antidote to the tendency to scatter, profliferate and get lost in spontaneous digression that life and technology induce in us.  The conference featured readings and debates and animated late-night conversations; gorgeous food, and always a small crowd to eat it with; a fantastic lunch hosted by the Irish Embassy; there was music and dancing and guided walking tours: first around Oviedo, then Avilés.

In Avilés, across the Penas river from the wonderful old town with its rich stone, strong colours and glass balconies, the future looms in the shape of a smooth white dome, a vast open terrace, a spiral ramp leading to a circular disc of glassy space – this is the Óscar Neimeyer Centre, a perfect expression of the belief that the arts can regenerate a region, attracting visitors, opening our minds. Inside, Carlos Saura’s exhibition “Luz” held us in thrall: http://video.latam.msn.com/watch/video/carlos-saura-llena-de-luz-el-centro-niemeyer/1gjj32zzc

When the Centre closed for the evening, we were reluctant to leave, but came out  to a different kind of spectacle: the industrial chimneys of the iron and steel works behind the Centre were transformed into giant instruments.  They played visual music for us, throwing surreal steamcloud shapes into a heavy sky, adding their own drama and beauty to the scene.

The conference was a triumph for the Association and for its organiser, Luz Mar González-Arias. Next year it will be held in Rioja.

During the conference, Luz Mar asked me if there’s pressure on writers in Ireland to write fiction that reflects boom-and-bust?  I slipped off on a ‘which writers do they mean?’ tangent and forgot to answer the actual question (sorry, Luz Mar). Here’s a belated answer, of sorts:

It’s true that there are people (including writers) who complain that contemporary Irish writers aren’t writing whatever it is those people want to read.  There are always hurlers in the ditch.  But this is a little like when your mother advises you to take up with that nice whatshisname, who’s always so polite and has a decent job, with prospects of promotion and a guaranteed pension.  Never mind the body odour, or the pleasure he used take in pulling the wings off flies when you were smaller.  No matter if the advice she offers is reasonable in its own way and on its own terms, it takes more than commonsense or logic – or even market forces – to ignite a novel.   Sorry, Ma, but without a spark, what chance of fire?  What’ll keep us warm in the long, lonely nights ahead? Writing a book is an intimate adventure.  It will hold you in thrall.  It will challenge, frustrate, torment and bore you stupid before it’s over.  You’ll expose yourself in it, in ways you never intended.  You have to care enough to want to stay with it to the end, whatever that end might be; you have to let yourself fall in deep, from the beginning. If you’re lucky, the memory of earlier passions will keep you going when doubts surface, as they’re bound to do.

There’ll be times when you’ll want to run away, times when you’d rather have all your teeth extracted, one by one, by a drunk wielding a crowbar and a wrench, than go back to the work-in-progress and immerse yourself in all that rawness, yet again.  But when you’re in it, it’s all there is.  Your mother’s advice might come back to taunt you at moments of doubt when you’re doing something else – (standing in a bookshop with someone else’s shiny new bestseller in your hands, for example).  But when you’re with it, when you’re immersed in your very own emerging world, it’s all that matters.  It, and the shadowy reader you sense, waiting at the borders for the right time to enter.  No pressure.

Writers Need Readers

On Saturday 2nd July the Irish Writers’ Centre will host a day-long Poetry and Short Stories Publishing Seminar with leading figures across a variety of branches of the publishing industry. Talks will be given by Ciaran Carty, Editor of New Irish Writing; Declan Meade, Editor of the Stinging Fly; Jessie Lendennie, Managing Director of Salmon Poetry; Kevin Barry, Short Story Writer and Novelist; and Kevin Higgins, Poet and Co-organiser of Over The Edge Reading Series.

From 10.30am to 4.30pm. Tickets €60 or €50 for members

For more info:
Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1
t: +353 (0)1 872 1302  e: info@writerscentre.ie  w: www.writerscentre.ie

“For This: Poems for Our Ireland” (A session at PN11)

At a Saturday afternoon session of the 2011 Poetry Now Festival in the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, sixteen readers, some of them poets participating in the festival, and some invited notables, were invited to read a poem that reflects (on) Ireland, where we are now.  The session was introduced by Vincent Woods.

Here’s a list of who read what:

Dermot Bolger: “Neilstown Matadors” (Dermot Bolger)

Michael Cronin: “Campo di Fiori: (Czeslaw Milosz)

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: “The Language Issue/Ceist na Teangan” (Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill)

Borbála Faragó: “The Art of Letting Things Go” (Anne Le Marquand Hartigan)

Diarmaid Ferriter: “1954” and “Canal Bank Walk” (Patrick Kavanagh)

Alice Leahy: “A Sociologist Looks Back” (Brian Power)

Jinx Lennon sang: “Nothing but a Leprechaun” (dedicated to ‘Ben, Denis and Michael’)  & “The Sumo Option” (Jinx Lennon)

Dave Lordan:  ”Song for the Minister of Education” (Dave Lordan)

Brian Lynch: “On a Distant View of the Irish Disaster” (Brian Lynch)

Sinead Morrisey: “Various Portents” (Alice Oswald)

David Norris: “Easter 1916” (WB Yeats)

Miriam O’Callaghan: “A Woman Untouched” (Frank McGuinness)

Leanne O’Sullivan: “Safe House” (Leanne O’Sullivan)

Gerry Smyth: “South of the Border” (Gerry Smyth)

Joseph Woods: “Old Country Awakening” (Joseph Woods)

Highlights for this member of the audience included:

• Leanne O’Sullivan’s marvellous poem.
• Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s “Ceist na Teangan” and its introduction. Describing the dilemma of Moses’s mother as she entrusted her infant son to the reeds and a future she couldn’t see, Ní Dhomhnaill remided us that even when things look bleak,  you never know what can happen.  Hope is what we all need (and maybe a small bit of faith, not to mention courage).
• Dave Lordan, saying that one of the things he likes about being Irish is that the question is never Can you sing? but whether you will sing. (He did.  Sort of.)
• Diarmaid Ferriter’s clever juxtaposition of “1954”, written at the end of an annus horribilis for Kavanagh, and “Canal Bank Walk”, written after things deteriorated further – and then took a sudden turn for the better.
• Jinx Lennon’s “Nothing But a Leprechaun”. It always makes me laugh a little/ cringe a little.
• Miriam O’Callaghan, reminding us that while ‘we can bore each other to death talking about the recession, the things that really matter are life, love, loss and death.’  The poem she read was written about the premature death of her sister, Anne.
• Seeing Seamus Heaney in the lobby afterwards. Heaney, who has been a staunch supporter of and familiar figure at the festival from the beginning, was awarded this year’s Irish Times Poetry Now Award for Human Chain the night before. But was he resting on his laurels? No. There he was, as always, lending his support to the proceedings.

The Poetry Now Festival attracts massive support from Irish poets.  It’s not just Heaney – scores of others turn up for the readings: established poets, emerging poets and those who are still unknown. They mix with, and talk freely to, readers,  fans, academics, punters.  It’s one of the most informal, democratic festivals around.  It’s been a bright spot on the calendar for 16 years.  For a while, there, it looked as though this might be its last year, but during the festival it was announced that, from now on, it will be amalgamated with the Mountains to Sea festival. We’re told it will retain its own identity, its own curator and so on.  We’re expected to be glad about this.

I’m not buying it, people.  Poetry Now came first, it has built an international profile and standard over the years, it attracts people to Dun Laoghaire in great numbers.  I don’t see why it has to amalgamate with anything. There was an element of sadness to standing among the throngs of people chatting in the lobby of the Pavilion and thinking, it won’t be like this again.