A new book of poetry by Tom Mathews reveals ‘the fruit of a very brilliant mind’
FOR MORE than 30 years the work of Tom Mathews has brightened our lives. His cartoons, in which a dazzling draughtsmanship is informed by a vast knowledge of literature, the arts and the dustier corners of popular culture, have graced many publications, and his Artoon is chuckled over on this page every week. He has illustrated a dozen books, published three volumes of cartoons and had 30 solo shows. In addition, he is an occasional writer and critic.
That’s Mathews the prolific artist. Mathews the man is a familiar sight drifting around the streets of Dublin: a gaunt, white-haired, extravagantly-moustached figure in an old-fashioned overcoat and long red scarf. He can often be found holding court in Grogan’s pub, always funny and interesting, expounding on the great enthusiasms of his life, which include women, stout, puns, Groucho Marx, Myles and Joyce. He will warble a saucy George Formby song at the drop of a pint.
Every so often his brow will furrow and he will pull from a pocket of his voluminous coat a little red notebook, and make a jotting: sudden thoughts, ideas for cartoons, jokes, overheard comments. And the bones of poems.
POETRY IS THE LEAST-KNOWN of Tom Mathews’s accomplishments, so the contents of his first collection, The Owl and the Pussycat, will come as a lovely surprise to the many fans of his artwork. Plenty of jokes, parodies and puns are to be found, naturally, but there are also poems that are rich in a quirky insight into human nature, and some that are quite moving, such as his lines on the death of his friend Michael Hartnett.
Launching The Owl and the Pussycat in Dublin on Tuesday, Galway City Arts Officer James C Harrold spoke of his long-time friend as “a great wordsmith” and said his poems were “the fruit of a very brilliant mind”.
The Owl and the Pussycat and other Poems
, by Tom Mathews is published by Dedalus Press, €10
In Memoriam Michael Hartnett
When we drank
He sometimes asked for a cartoon
For his partner
If he was late
Or one over the eight.
Months after he died,
Opening her bag she asked, ‘Remember these?’
Bar doodles: fish, rhinoceri, a dog with wings.
A child’s purse full of useless things.
Self at 53
Cast off. Set sail now for some
new-found land.
Explain. (Your wife could never understand.)
Take Yeat’s ‘After Ronsard’ from the shelf.
Trot out the tried and tested old
routines.
Tell one last younger woman what life means
Before you find out what life meant yourself.
Lux Mundi
Mary dreamed Frankenstein from
disparate parts,
One of them Byron’s size.
Shelley thought eyes her nipples in a dream
That Polidori could not analyse.
Afloat, asleep in amniotic waves
George Gordon needs no orthopaedic boot.
Dreaming of days at Cambridge with his bear:
Which was creation’s Lord, and which was brute?
The great insomniac who dreams them all,
Whose contemplation fixes stars and suns,
Smiles on his son who gave the world Don Juan
As on a convent full of sleeping nuns,
Looks in the heart of the old shabby bear
And sends him dreams of marzipan and buns.
The Owl and the Pussycat
Henry James had two kings names.
But so I fear did Edward Lear.
Charity
With her new love
My old drives past.
Oh flag lady, fly your flags
At half mast.
The Dark
The dark? My darling, after fifty-two
You find the light is good for whistling too.
