Some years ago I had given a reading at a small library in the West of Ireland when, at its conclusion and in the midst of the predictable politenesses of all sorts, an elderly man approached me. In broken English he asked me if I would care to examine his shoulder. He had a bad pain there. Perhaps I would look at it?
Not knowing quite what to say, I replied that it would be advisable for him to seek the advice of a medical doctor. His eyes never left mine. But you are a poet, he said, rubbing his arm. You can cure me. Embarrassed now and desiring only to get away, I told him he was mistaken. I could not cure him. But you are a poet, he repeated. I mumbled something vague about doctors and the like and moved away. I felt defeated, humbled, a fraud. To him I was a fraud. This story is true. I trust he found with a medical practitioner what he could not with a poet in whom he had placed the last vestiges of an ancient faith. I do not believe it is enough to say that he had stepped out of another age; to him, a poet was a man in whom various magical as well as medical powers were invested. A poet should possess the power to heal. Since clearly I did not, I was not a poet. I was a pretender who made pretty sounds with a half-foreign language.
Poets speak of experiencing epiphanies; I might say that this event was, for me, such an epiphany and its message was humbling. I have never been able to write a poem since without experiencing an agitation, a restlessness, as if I were about to pull off a trick of some sort; as if I were about to fool someone. I can lecture a group on the technique of writing poetry but I can never instill in them - perhaps I shouldn't, in any case - the sense of loss that I have experienced at the heart of writing a poem; the feeling that one approached something vital, only to be cast away from it at the last moment. Contemporary Irish poetry enjoys publicity, fame, celebrity. Poetry is big business. There are glittering prizes, readings, festivals, workshops, summer schools. The title of "poet" is bestowed with disconcerting ease. Poetry can even provide a career with good prospects for travel. Deep things are said about poetry; collections are spoken of as being important, poets are considered to have valuable things to say. Paradoxically, and too often, success as a poet is measured at least as much in terms of public profile as poetic ability. Poetry is showbiz.
It is a thing scarcely to be whispered, but we have come actually to expect very little of poetry and not much in the way of civic or political - let alone medicinal - response from poets. We applaud emotion rather than style. Blurring the achievement of a handful of excellent poets is the hotchpotch poetry we deserve; perhaps it is the poetry we want. Critics are struck word blind in the blizzard of new collections, anthologies - do we truly believe that all of this work is good? But our literary world is small and no poet who has a thought for his future is about to stand up and criticise a system which sustains him or may come to sustain him.
Change in the critical status quo is difficult, if not impossible, to pursue. Poetry is politics. Irish poetry has become increasingly a functioning unit of the Establishment; overall, it does not argue for change and reform and does not criticise. Irish poets are silent on controversial social or political issues. Odd, this, given the number of Irish poets who appear to take inspiration from the many of their fellows persecuted under, for example, the old Soviet regime. Significantly, it is not our poets but our journalists who map the conscience of our times and take the risks. Last December, a fine American poet, Denise Levertov, died. Levertov in her day spoke against the US administration's policy in Viet Nam and encouraged draft resistance and believed strongly in the social knock-on effects of poetry. No Levertov could ever arise in the Ireland of today. What Irish poet would risk so much? Our poets found no voice during seasons of allegations (and revelations) of questionable doings involving big business and politics; nor, for that matter, have they reacted to news of appalling atrocities in Algeria (where journalists too have died).
Likewise, and very tellingly, poets of the Republic were without unprompted voice on the business of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Putting one's political opinion in print with one's name signed at the bottom is not a practice in which Irish poets seem able to indulge. The newspaper letters columns remained free of their names.
Are these various silences merely the pursuance of some sort of politics by other means? What, one might begin to ask, is the exact role of the contemporary Irish poet, if so much already has been refused by him? Neither healer nor commentator, the poet has become an entertainer. The power to heal - as in the sense of to change positively - can be given back to poetry. It will require courage. Historically, the best Gaelic poets could write excellent love poetry and still find room - and courage - to comment acidly on the politics of their day. They understood, and remained unafraid of, the power and sanctity of words. To call oneself a poet was to assume a public as well as a private responsibility. By merely performing we, as poets, diminish ourselves. I will be happy enough if, upon the next occasion someone crosses a room in which I have read my work and asks me to define my role as a writer, I can do so in terms of what I am rather than what I am not. I need to know what it is that I, as a poet, actually do.