Louis de Paor: 'What Cork offers to poets is special'
Cork poet Louis de Paor.
Cork poet Louis de Paor says it’s time Ireland had a grown-up conversation about our native language. On visits to primary schools around his adopted Galway, he is struck by the wealth of languages among children, as well as their openness to learn more.
“Those kids, who might be speaking Urdu or Polish at home, never have a problem learning Irish. Often, they are the most attuned to linguistic differences and bilingualism. The Anglophone world is rare in thinking monolingualism is normal. The idea that one language fits all the world is, and can be, makes no sense,” says De Paor, back in his hometown to read at O’Bhéal’s Winter Warmer poetry festival.
The 63-year-old father-of-five simply can’t imagine Irish not being an essential element of our formation as children, young adults, and adults. Far from being draconian on the topic, he notes that students leave school a lot later now, so there may be some room for choice in their final years.
“In that case, the basic principle of rewarding difficulty should be extended to those who undertake a more challenging course, including native speakers of Irish and others whose language skills are comparable. Why should mathematical ability be rewarded and not advanced skills in other subjects such as Irish?,” says De Paor, director of the Centre for Irish Studies at UCG.
The value of literature also might not be immediately clear, he suggests, recalling his parents’ generation who learned off reams of poetry.
“It was only in later life that they made sense of them because the words explained life to them in a way that they hadn’t foreseen. These things may not resonate for ten or twenty years.”
While De Paor has been promoting Irish for many years in academic, literary and other circles, some of the most powerful advocacy for the language has come in the past year with the rise of Kneecap. The Corkman is excited about the Belfast rappers, even if he does have some reservations about them.
“I have a real issue with the celebration of drug culture, but in every other aspect I think Kneecap, the hip hop trio from West Belfast, are exhilarating; they capture the excitement of being young. The message is fantastic – words and language are powerful, a substitute for violence rather than a prelude to it. That’s what the cultural nationalism of the 19th and early 20th century was all about.”
He’s similarly impressed by the creative cooperative Aerach Aiteach Gaelach – who bring together queer identity and the Irish language. “They have a very public presence, and they are normalising queerness and the language in a fascinating way,” he says.
There’s a growing momentum in the celebration of the language in general, he believes.
“You know there is something going on when political parties who did nothing for the Irish language put Irish on their posters. They don’t mean to declare their hypocrisy there. They feel there is something to exploit.”
Although De Paor’s wife, Shirley Bourke, jokingly tells him he knows nothing about women (having grown up in a house of boys and men), Irish women feature heavily in his new collection: Cé a Mharaigh Emma Mhic Mhathúna?
The title of the book is in honour of Emma Mhic Mhathúna, the Kerry-based woman who died from cervical cancer in 2018, having had two tests that came back negative. The poet contrasts how Mhic Mhathúna sounded speaking in English on Morning Ireland, with how she sounded speaking in Irish on Radio na Gaeltachta a few days before.
“In English, she sounded broken. She sounded funny, warm, bold in Irish. I wrote the poem not long after she died,” he says.
The collection also has a poem about the other late cervical cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan. “I was raging when I wrote it. There is a poem also for Sinéad O Connor – for her capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation,” says De Paor.
The poet has long been deeply political and, as the election campaign ramps up, he expresses great dissatisfaction with the current status quo.
“In the end we’re all culpable because our rage only lasts a day before the next outrage. We’re very slow to act on our collective sense of anger when something happens. A homeless man dies outside Dáil Éireann and you think the world is going to stop and it doesn’t… We have no sense of collective agency, and our political system seems to thrive on that.” It is a stasis he resents.
“Simon Harris was the Minister for Health when Emma Mhic Mhathúna died, and now he is the Taoiseach. Not only is there no shame, no accountability, and no responsibility, it seems people can flourish and progress to the next level.”
Another poem in the collection, written after the last general election, explores how the two parties who he describes as having been “sharply rebuked by the electorate”, came together to exclude the most popular vote.
“If the established parties refuse to talk to another party, then there is no chance of change. They should negotiate with all parties in good faith. The gap between them is not so great.”
Born in Cork in 1961, Louis de Paor is always happy to come home.
“I’m up and down to Cork all the time. I have six brothers living in Cork. I am completely at my ease there. My children, when they were young, would give out about me faking the Cork accent, but I’d tell them it’s the rest of the time I’m faking it.”
Cork is a poetry hub, according to this prodigal son. “There is plenty going on elsewhere, but I don’t think it’s parochialism to say what Cork offers to poets is special. There is a level of public engagement there that is fascinating. The work being done by Patrick Cotter and the Munster Literature Centre is extraordinary. And Paul Casey in Ó Bhéal too, organising festivals where you are being offered a guaranteed audience.” He describes Cork as a hospitable place for difference and diversity.
“There is a form of creative listening in Cork that is discerning, and I think it’s a trigger for further writing, and people feel that when they are on stage. This isn’t only about English and Irish; we have a genuinely exciting landscape now of multiple languages.”
Louis de Paor’s collection, which he will no doubt share at the Cork event, has great lightness and hope in it too. He highlights one poem for which there is a translation, entitled 'Slí na Fírinne' or Here after. The poem traces a line between his own parents and his grandchildren.
"The child stands between us,
a lantern telling us there’s no need
to be afraid anymore:"
He was thrilled when this poem was chosen to be displayed in the Poetry in the Park series by Patricia Looney of Cork City Library.
“My daughter and granddaughter took a picture of it in Fitzgerald’s Park. My daughter was born a stone’s throw away in the Erinville, and I was born up the other way in the Bons. My parents were still around when my granddaughter was born. I see myself as a link in that chain. My grandparents were born in Cork at the start of the last century and my grandchildren, hopefully, will live to the end of this one. I won’t be around, but I am part of that. That idea is also central to this collection, alongside the rage in it.” The Irish language arguably serves the same purpose for De Paor – acting as a vital link between what is past and what is, excitingly, yet to come.
- Ó Bheal’s Winter Warmer festival of poetry takes place at Nano Nagle Place in Cork, November 22-24. Louis de Paor will read on Saturday at 9.30pm. See www.obheal.ie/blog/
Theo Dorgan is a poet with ten collections published, the most recent being Once Was A Boy, the One City One Book choice for Cork City Libraries 2024. Friday, 7pm.
Emma McKervey is an award winning poet from County Down. Her first collection The Rag Tree Speaks was published by Doire Press, and Highland Boundary Fault was published by Turas Press in May 2024. Friday, 9pm
Lorenzo Mari has published seven poetry collections so far; the most recent ones are: Ornitorinco in cinque passi (2016), Querencia (2019) and Soggetti a cancellazione (2022). Friday, 9.30pm
Paula Meehan’s award-winning poetry has garnered widespread popular and critical acclaim. She has been translated into many languages; recently Japanese & Dutch with collections forthcoming in Spanish, Polish, Greek. Saturday, 7pm
Strive Theatre and new Cork band MacBóchra will present a work in progress performance of their bilingual theatrical collaboration Goll – an experimental theatre work fusing music, poetry, film, dance and storytelling. Sunday, 3.30pm
