North's poetic politicians step aside from photo opportunities to offer a wider vision

THE PAINTINGS, photographs and poems proudly on display by Assembly members in the Great Hall of the Parliament Buildings illustrate another side of the Stormont politicians – that these are men and women in search of a wider vision beyond politics.

But there’s one wonderful, frustrated, vexed, bitter and deeply honest poem that is purely political, and far removed from the landscapes, abstracts and poems framed and mounted on the walls of the hall.

It’s by Ulster Unionist MLA for Strangford David McNarry. “I wrote it in 30 seconds,” he says.

It goes: Whoever bans the letter box at the bottom of the front door will get my vote

Up twenty steps, no one in to canvass, no one in to take note

That I called, was there to talk, throat dry, sounding like a frog

Letter box low down, having to stoop, then it came at me, that nasty little dog.

In four lines from the heart it resonates with the manifold hardships, including public indifference and physical pain, that politicians must endure on election canvass.

One-third of the 108 MLAs entered the competition organised by the Metropolitan Arts Centre in Belfast. For the most part they steered away from overtly political expressions of their artistic capabilities.

Former deputy speaker and now Independent unionist David McClarty won the prize for best photograph, of Mussenden Temple near Castlerock in Derry.

Cycling enthusiast and SDLP MLA Conall McDevitt won the poetry prize with his carefully structured 12-liner, The Peloton of Hope, which has references to Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and John Hewitt, who live or had lived in the MLA's South Belfast constituency.

There’s a fine pastel of a bridge by Alliance MLA Anna Lo and interesting poems from former Sinn Féin junior minister Gerry Kelly and SDLP MLA Alban Maginness.

There were eye-catching exhibits from the likes of former Sinn Féin minister Conor Murphy, UUP Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy, Gerry Adams’s successor as MP for West Belfast Paul Maskey and his brother Alex, and from MLAs such as Basil McCrea, Patsy McGlone, Judith Cochrane and John McCallister.

However there was a general consensus among the judges, who included artist Neil Shawcross, broadcaster Wendy Austin and journalist and art expert Eamonn Mallie, that South Antrim Ulster Unionist MLA Danny Kinahan was the most accomplished and deserved the overall prize.

His winning work was an “homage” to the Northern artist Basil Blackshaw, and is four rectangles of primary colours with an outline of Parliament Buildings etched on each shape.

Nothing less would have been expected from Mr Kinahan because as well as his political duties, he lives in a castle in Templepatrick, Co Antrim, was Christie’s former representative in Northern Ireland and still owns the Danny Kinahan fine art gallery in his Castle Upton.

“I felt under pressure,” he admitted, “but I was very chuffed to have won.”

A poem by Sinn Féin Mid- Ulster MLA Barry McElduff explores his aspiration to a united Ireland, but how he also has a right and a duty to be at Stormont:

’Twas RTÉ in our house, crackling towards Athlone, The Angelus and Late Late LPs of Kevin Barry and the Lonely Woods of Upton From Carmen to Carson

Of course I have business here.

Step aside.

The people of Dregish and Tattyreagh have sent me here.

Perhaps they were too busy, but there is little ministerial representation in the exhibition. Nothing from Peter Robinson or Martin McGuinness. It was particularly surprising that the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister didn’t enter, considering his liking for writing poetry.

DUP Minister for Tourism Arlene Foster did supply a quirky photograph, a shot of a dilapidated birdhouse with a BB sign and with the offbeat title, “In need of a tourism grant”.

Mallie was reasonably – but not overly generous – in his estimation of the overall work. “With a few exceptions there is a lot of room for improvement, but it’s always interesting to see the ‘otherness’ of people,” he said.

The exhibition runs to the end of this month and can be taken in with a tour of Stormont.