The Wrong Country. Gerald Dawe

      

      The Wrong

      Country

      BY THE SAME AUTHOR

      Poetry

      SHELTERING PLACES

      THE LUNDYS LETTER

      SUNDAY SCHOOL

      HEART OF HEARTS

      THE MORNING TRAIN

      LAKE GENEVA

      POINTS WEST

      SELECTED POEMS

      MICKEY FINN’S AIR

      EARLY POEMS

      Prose

      THE PROPER WORD

      OF WAR AND WAR’S ALARMS

      IN ANOTHER WORLD

      Editor

      THE YOUNGER IRISH POETS

      EARTH VOICES WHISPERING:

      IRISH POETRY OF WAR 1914–1945

      THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO IRISH POETS

      The Wrong

      Country

      ESSAYS ON MODERN

      IRISH WRITING

      Gerald Dawe

      First published in 2018 by

      Irish Academic Press

      10 George’s Street

      Newbridge

      Co. Kildare

      Ireland

       www.iap.ie

      © Gerald Dawe, 2018

      9781788550284 (Cloth)

      9781788550291 (Kindle)

      9781788550307 (Epub)

      9781788550314 (PDF)

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Interior design by www.jminfotechindia.com

      Typeset in Bembo 11.5/14.5 pt

      Jacket design by River Design

      Jacket front: Colin Middleton, The Holy Land, 1945 (oil on canvas), © Estate of Colin Middleton, IVARO Dublin, 2018.

      CONTENTS

       Acknowledgements

       1. HEARING THINGS

       2. PLUNKETT’S CITY

       3. BORDER CROSSINGS

       4. FROM THE GINGER MAN TO KITTY STOBLING

       5. THE PASSIONATE TRANSITORY: JOHN MCGAHERN

       6. FATAL ATTRACTIONS: JOHN BERRYMAN IN DUBLIN

       7. HISTORY LESSONS: DEREK MAHON & SEAMUS DEANE

       8. THE GREEN LIGHT: STEWART PARKER

       9. DAYS OF BURNED COUNTRYSIDE: EAVAN BOLAND & EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN

       10. STORY OF THE REPUBLIC

       11. ETHNA CARBERY IN H BLOCK

       12. FROM DUSTY BLUEBELLS TO PARALLAX

       13. BASHŌ, THE RIVER MOY AND THE SUPERSER

       14. THE PRACTICE OF WRITING

       EPILOGUE: FITTING IN

       Endnotes

       Bibliography

       Index

      In memory of

      Gerard Fanning

      1952–2017

      ‘You can’t be afraid of saying the opposite, even if you look like a fool and everybody thinks you’re in the wrong country, speaking the wrong language.’

      Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      The book was completed in Pembroke College, Cambridge, thanks to the good offices of Dr Mark Wormald, to whom kind acknowledgement is made for his hospitality and the opportunity to think things over in the serene environment of Pembroke College Library; and to the staff there, particularly Ms Patricia Aske, and for the home from home at Botolph Lane. Acknowledgements also to the organisers of several academic conferences/literary gatherings where many of the issues and subjects explored in The Wrong Country were first aired: Paul Delaney, School of English, Trinity College Dublin for a symposium on ‘Identity and Cultural Diversity’ (Hugo Hamilton); ‘Reading the Fifties’, with Darryl Jones, School of English and Trinity Long Room Hub, as well as lectures given to the John McGahern Conference, Carrick-on-Shannon (John Kenny); Stewart Parker Commemorative Conference, School of Drama, Queen’s University Belfast (Mark Phelan); Trinity College Samuel Beckett Summer School (Sam Slote); ‘Imagination in the Classroom’, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (Anne Fogarty, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Eibhear Walshe); Goldsmith Literary Weekend, Longford (Seamus McCormack and Clare Butler); ‘One City One Book: Strumpet City’, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Libraries (Marian Keyes and Jane Alger); John Hewitt Summer School, Armagh (Cathal Dallat and Anthony Kennedy); ‘From Dusty Bluebells to Parallax: reading and writing poetry from Northern Ireland’, Ulster Poetry Project, Ulster University (Kathryn White and Frank Ferguson), ‘George Reavey Commemoration’ Trinity College Dublin (Sandra O’Connell); ‘The North Began? Ulster and the Irish Revolution, 1900–1925’, Trinity College Dublin (Marnie Hay and Eunan O’Halpin). ‘History Lessons’ is based upon two lectures on Derek Mahon delivered at ISAIL Japan and on Seamus Deane at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

      I would particularly like to thank Dorothea Melvin for her advice and insight into much of the social and cultural background covered in this book and also to my late friend Gerard Fanning, and to Seona Mac Réamoinn, who answered queries about UCD and Dublin during the 1970s. To Conor Linnie, who helped out when the formatting was beyond me, and Jonathan Williams, first responder, many and lasting thanks. Earlier versions of some of the chapters appeared in the following publications, to whom kind acknowledgement is made: Paul Delaney (ed.), Reading Colm Toíbín (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2008); Gerald Dawe, Darryl Jones and Nora Pellazi (eds), Beautiful Strangers: Ireland and the World of the 1950s (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2012); Anne Fogarty, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Eibhear Walshe (eds), Imagination in the Classroom: Teaching