One journey, two roads

Filíocht: To read Michael Davitt's Fardoras and Pól Ó Muirí's Na Móinteacha is to witness the development of two very dissimilar…

Filíocht: To read Michael Davitt's Fardoras and Pól Ó Muirí's Na Móinteacha is to witness the development of two very dissimilar literary talents as they progress on a poetic journey which is closely bound up with the fate of their chosen medium of expression.

Ó Muirí's collection was inspired by Na Móinteacha, a region on the southern shore of Lough Neagh where the Irish language is no longer spoken, but whose landscape becomes the site and subject of a poetry of linguistic repossession. The Fardoras (lintel) in the title of Davitt's collection is that elusive cultural element which the non-native speaker of Irish constantly seeks. Many of the poems in both collections could only be conceived in a language such as Irish, but while the vulnerability of the medium gives rise to a vigorous poetry of resistance in Davitt, in Ó Muirí it produces a sense of stoic acceptance that his poem may be of no more consequence than a leaf, which, though the natural product of a nurturing tree, may alight ultimately on a bed of indifference.

Na Móinteacha develops two central strands in Ó Muirí's poetry up to now, with meditations on the physical world and on human relationships, with the natural environment dovetailing into a historical critique of the forces shaping landscapes and their populations. Peaceful pastoral is exposed as a scene of slaughter in the title poem for example, as herons and buzzards flee the din of RAF fighter planes, which in turn evoke memories of sectarian killers and their prey. Nationalism does not escape Ó Muirí's critique of politically motivated violence. The sparse 'Sluasaid' is a searing condemnation of any attempt to justify the chilling brutality of political murder, while 'Disappeared' and 'Fiche Bliain' expose the natural world's indifference both to the violence, and to the commemorations of its victims, enacted upon it.

While landscape triggers Ó Muirí's historical sensibility, most of Michael Davitt's poems are inspired by individuals rather than places. He revisits previously worked material in poems which recollect scenes and events of youth, but the most powerful poems are those which explore new emotional territories. These include a poem for an estranged daughter and a poem of reconciliation for an absent son, both of which dramatise the pain of a father's loss. The poems lamenting particular individuals, such as 'Seacláidí' (in memory of poet and linguist Tomás Tóibín) and 'Ceannasaí' (in memory of Dónall Ó Móráin, founder of Gael Linn), are among the finest in the collection, combining as they do the drama of particular events and characters with the understanding borne of personal experience of human strength and weakness.

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The dominant mood throughout the collection is elegiac, best represented in poems such as 'Treabhsar m'Athar', where an item of apparel can reflect the value system of a whole generation. Even the humorous satirical poems for which Davitt is well known - a good example from this collection being 'em . . . tv' - fail to disguise an element of nostalgia for a former era, before the Irish became big-time consumers, tainted by their exposure to, and desire for, commercial globalised cultural products. The irony of using the zapper to escape from Rupert Murdoch's Sky News, only to discover that all TG4 can offer at the time is an American-produced Western, is not lost on the poet as cultural critic. One feels, however, that the kind of critique offered in the poem 'Sínte Fada' gives little recognition to the various levels of contemporary cultural confusion and less still to their fundamental causes. This poem refers to the mis-spelling on a public signpost of the placename Móta (where it appeared as Motá) and such an example of official carelessness is then laid at the door of our political leaders, "An Teashock, An Tawnishta,/ is Na Tocktee Dawla uile sa Dawl,/ idir Feena Gale is Feena Fawl", who are in turn implicated in the colonisation of Bray Town Hall by McDonald's. The poem goes on to ridicule the kinds of English and Irish now spoken in Ireland. People who say "Cheers", "Oh My God!" or "I was, like . . . !" are only as annoying as those whose grammatically inaccurate Irish, as exemplified in phrases such as "Cad a bhfuil sé?" or "An rud gur féidir a dhéanamh", grates on the ear of the linguistically discerning poet. Before the end of this poem, the poet has rehearsed his response to a query about his way of life posed by a fellow passenger on a train: "and before you tell me/ that you're basically in favour/ but it was beaten into you in school/ I want to say that I'm allergic/ to people like you!" We are then presented with an image from a Sky News bulletin viewed on a television screen (located as a queue pacifier in the bank) of the bombing of Afghanistan and the surreal face of Tony Blair emerging as the pacifier of the Arab World, before being reminded of the cause of the irritation in the first place, that errant síneadh fada on a signpost. Such juxtapositions, while they may create a humorous impression, are far less effective than those presented in the more politically focused 'Deora do Mheiriceá' (which seeks to contextualise the bombing of the Twin Towers) or in the jocose '52 Focal Comhairle don Ábhar File' (which ends with the following acceptance of changing linguistic standards: "Féach ar an gcaighdeán mar chárta creidmheasa/ Féach ar an gcriól mar chash/ Iompaigh gach ar múineadh riamh duit/ Droim ar ais").

While contemporary language politics features more prominently in Davitt's poetry than in Ó Muirí's, his linguistic confidence allows him to incorporate freely various speech styles into his work. Ó Muirí, on the other hand, eschews the conversational in favour of a finely honed literary language which adds to the effectiveness of his poems of quiet contemplation.

Máirín Nic Eoin lecturers in the Department of Irish in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. Her latest book, Trén bhFearann Breac: An Díláithriú Cultúir i Nualitríocht na Gaeilge, will be published by Cois Life later this year