Poetry tuned to life
MITA KAPUR
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His literary instincts make Derek Mahon transcend boundaries.
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Intense: Derek Mahon
Taken in is the right expression. Derek Mahon laughed when we spoke about the effect his poems have on a first time reader. The play of visual imagery, the forcefulness of his observations give the feeling of each poem being a whole world within itse
lf. Literature and literary instincts make him transcend boundaries, yes, it does. But you mustn’t lose sight of the local, the roots. Is it that Derek writes to ease with his talk the solitude locked in my mind. “Writing is a social activity. I write for a circle of my friends. This was said on an occasion when I was at one place and my family at another. I am not, generally, a solitary person. It was a frame of mind at a given moment, not a general statement.”
Deep impact
Growing up in a milieu of changing Ireland, the ongoing debate between internationalism and provincialism is pondered over. Derek drew that thin line which can distinguish parochialism and provincialism. It’s when an Irish person waits to see what a London paper has to say before making up his mind-on a book or a film dependent on a metropolitan opinion. Parochialism is when you don’t bother and make up your own mind, on the basis of your own theory, and make your own world. In a funny sort of way, parochial writing is more international, more cosmopolitan than metropolitan writing. I’m really thinking about Irish and English poetry. Irish poetry is more like Indian, South American poetry is than English poetry. Irish poetry is more international in that sense. Derek’s poem, “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford” deals with it,
This poem was dedicated to an old friend, J. G. Farrell and the idea is borrowed from one of his novels. “There is an island I took that information and extended the details in my own way. A keen understanding of literary tradition shows up, like everybody I’ve done my reading in poetry but I make references to things why I do that I don’t know but I refer frequently to other writing. Any writer should have intense literary tradition. “The images he uses are just a description I suppose, when you are talking about describing a ship at sea or something like that. I just do it, I can’t tell you how it’s done.” There was an American artist from the 1950s, Barnett Newman who said aesthetics is for the artists as ornithology is for the birds. It’s hard to talk to about it articulately because you can’t be thinking about a process while you are engaged in a process. Of course, some people think theoretically or analytically about their own work but I don’t, I just write. Even if I use the same rhyme three or four times, it doesn’t bother me.
The complete world-ness of his poems, “I’d like to think that each detail in my poems was an individual thought and that they all cohered in some way to form a world that would be nice to know. I’ve been told that it’s true but I can’t see it myself, either in the woods or the trees, I am too close to it but I do hope that’s the case. The imagery is modern and also closely knitted with nature, I am conscious of doing both the things at the same time; I have a lot of fun out of that. Modernising the old you have to write and connect with the past. I am a city boy. I grew up in Belfast. I was always having great fun on my bicycle, always running off to the countryside. Nature doesn’t naturally to me, but it is something that I try to get involved with as a stranger.”
Life-like
Life, in Harbour Lights, is emphatically something to be “lived in earnest”, and Mahon’s poetry is now tuned more deliberately to life than to the kind of art which might seek to go beyond life. May be. “Life is an ultimate value but perhaps I have a curiosity about that dimension. I don’t philosophise. In most cases I try hard to say why but in some cases you have to have a plan on a smaller scale, and the larger scale sometimes, it happens out of the blue. Harbour lights was written after I moved to where I live now by the sea. It’s about a story of a figure living in a city in the centre of a populated area and he has sort of withdrawn to a quiet place, a withdrawal from the world in a certain sense, not completely though. Poetry is an art and a craft. It should be an art ideally. It is a craft. The emotions come in naturally, if you are writing, your own emotional content will come into it.
“I don’t always read poetry. I am always reading ten different things. I wanted to read some Indian books. Wendy Doniger and Vikas Swarup, R. K. Narayan, Gitanjali, - all very obvious choices, but these are the books that I have picked up.”
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