Editorials

The Irish Times view on the place of poetry: how to pay attention

The pandemic seem to have triggered a renewal of interest in poetry as a place in which to find our bearings and reset our perspectives

The poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, who has died at the age of 99, was one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill

Fri Oct 22 2021 - 22:30

Many of us end our school days bidding farewell to poetry, and not always a fond farewell. But for many others it remains an essential part of life. Whatever about being "the unacknowledged legislators", as Shelley called them, poets are often the specialists we turn to on occasions of personal trauma or loss, war or pestilence. The recent deaths of two of this country's most distinguished poets, Brendan Kennelly and Máire Mhac an tSaoi, and the responses to their deaths, is a reminder of poetry's value in society and the role of those who write it.

It is perhaps the most accommodating of the art forms. It can praise or protest, elegise or eulogise, tell a story or evoke a place, speak to moments of remembrance and romance – and, as poets have always been doing, give powerful expression to the ache of love. Poetry reminds us how to pay attention to the world and its wonders, to look at things anew, as Kennelly urges the reader to do in his popular poem Begin.

There is much activity around poetry that deserves public support and funding: the small press publishing that is almost a labour of love, the festivals and readings, the UCD Poetry Archive where the harvesting of poets' voices will be a resource for future generations, and particularly the work Poetry Ireland, which only recently, in collaboration with local authorities, created the opportunity for a cohort of local Poet Laureates to pay homage to their towns and communities.

Poetry has also been an enriching part of the ongoing programme of commemorations, providing the most appropriate language for these complex and sensitive occasions looking back on our history.

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The pandemic and its lockdowns seem to have triggered a renewal of interest in poetry as a consolatory art, a place in which to find our bearings and reset our perspectives. This has been a time in need of the kind of assurance the late Derek Mahon provides in his poem Everything is Going to be All Right. In our age of spin and sloganeering, poetry is more necessary than ever.

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