Mike Garry: From punk ethic and prison to the voice of Man Utd

IKE GARRY is Manchester through and through, but his parents are Irish. He was born in 1965, one of six kids; his mother is from Armagh, his father from Mullingar, Co Westmeath. In the 1970s, the family used to holiday around Carlingford Lough, careering about the countryside in a sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle. Each evening they had to cross the border to get back to their digs.

“My drunken father was telling every English soldier,” says Garry, “these young lads with camouflage stuff on their faces, to ‘Go on then, F-off back home and get out of my country.’ As a kid, it was a bit hairy. We were brought up in a household where my dad was an extreme Republican. Obviously he was nowhere near the Troubles! He didn’t understand it. My mam was a really bright woman, but she had to get out because she found herself getting slowly drawn into it so she escaped to Manchester.”

Garry has woven bits from his parents — the dad’s outspokenness, perhaps, and his mother’s smarts — to become one of the most popular spoken-word poets of his generation. He’s beloved on the streets and by institutions such as the BBC and Manchester United, who commissioned him to put words to a recent Nike advert, and has gigged at New York’s Carnegie Hall with New Order.

Garry says he loves the musicality of words and freely admits he lifts lines for his poems from listening to chat from the old boys who drink in the pubs around Manchester. He says he got the habit early on.

“One of my earliest memories is that we used to have to go to work with my dad. He was a contractor. I remember he took us into the pub one day. It was his payday. All I remember were these little old guys and whenever anyone would say something, they’d go: ‘Correct.’ ‘Correct.’ ‘Correct.’ Repeatedly.

“The expression ‘Suffering Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’ was a constant in our house or ‘Shut that cursed door’. All over Ireland, too — they swear. They don’t give a damn. I remember me mam had a caravan in Wales and about 10 years ago we met a cousin of ours. She was about 80. I remember her telling a story and the barrage of swearing that came out of this little old Irish woman. It was musical, absolutely musical.”

Garry came of age during the punk era. He woke up one day in 1977 and his image was transformed, suddenly he was “cool” — skin-tight pants and scruffy shoes were suddenly de rigour. He says he’s carried the punk do-it-yourself spirit with him through life. He publishes all his books. Punk also gave poor, working class skins like himself the confidence that they, too, had a voice. It’s a message he drills into the youths he works with these days. He also encourages them to read, having worked as a librarian for 15 years.

“I go to jails and I tell them, ‘Reading is our way out. If we learn to read and to communicate effectively, you’ve got the keys to life there. That’s why the rich are rich because they’ve been told all their life, given that confidence in private schools that they’re going to run the gaff.’

“Another massive influence on my poetry is the fact that I didn’t really want to fight because when I fought I’d roll around the floor and get all me clothes ripped and take lots of slaps. When I got home I’d get beat off me mam for being in a fight. I had to use language and humour and wit and repartee. The ability to take someone and convince them not to beat you or give you any grief is a wonderful skill.”

Mike Garry performs at the Indiependence Music and Arts Festival, Deer Farm, Mitchelstown, Co Cork, which takes place Friday, July 31 to Sunday, August 2. www.indiependencefestival.com

Mike Garry has had a long and storied career, and brings it to a festival in Cork next week, writes Richard Fitzpatrick