Thomas Ovans admires a poetic memoir by Naomi Foyle which celebrates the life of the Belfast writer and activist Mairtin Crawford
No Enemy but Time
Naomi Foyle
Waterloo Press
ISBN 978 1906 74289
32 pp ÂŁ7
The major part of this pamphlet consists of poems in memory of Belfast writer and cultural activist Mairtin Crawford. Crawfordâs name may not be familiar to all London Grip readers; but Naomi Foyle is doubly qualified to write about him. In the first place she has edited his Selected Poems (Lagan Press 2015); and furthermore â as the poems make clear â she was also a personal friend. But can poems convey a real sense of a person whom readers have never met?
The first two poems provide some quick outlines, rather like preliminary sketches for a major painting. But, paradoxically, Crawford begins really to come to life in the poems which deal with his death. âGhost Writer (1)â imagines Crawfordâs reactions to his own funeral
Being carried into church by six strong women;
a Ginsberg poem to fuck off the priest;
a fainting girl, the wake: youâd have loved it all.
Some in the congregation dare to speculate (in a variation on words by war poet Charles Sorley) that âyou wouldnât have minded being deadâ and that âyouâd been plotting for years to/ slide off mid-actâ. Crawfordâs death was due to a brain haemorrhage and Foyle uses the darkly humorous remark âTrust you to die / of something I canât spellâ to be doubly revealing about both herself and her subject.
The poem âBloody Mindedâ â an intentionally daring title, given the manner of Crawfordâs death â begins to flesh out a picture of a rebellious, visionary risk-taker
All the thumpings and kickings
you asked for and received â
why, Mairtin, why?
...
Self-punishment beatings were they?
Other vivid glimpses occur in âAuthorisationâ when, in Manhattan, âyou shot at random strangers / with a yellow water pistolâ and in âConflicting Reportsâ where, in order to account for a black eye,
when pressed, youâd claim
âlamp postsâ were the culprits
or â a few too many pints.â
Behind all this of course lie serious issues of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland; and as well as describing the reactions of Crawford, the âdie-hard Irish romanticâ, Foyle reveals how she herself has been touched by the Troubles. She recalls a day when âBloody Sunday was being exhumedâ and when she herself was experiencing personal loss:
My mother had just died, my name felt wrong;
In a garden as small as an H-Block cell,
I told you about my Irish great-granny,
and you said I could play for the team.
That throw-away prison reference is masterly. Elsewhere, as if to complement Crawfordâs bluntly dismissive âThe RUC. Those âOrange bastardsââ, Foyle offers her own onomatopoeic recollection of a July 12th when âBelfast Orangemen were banging on / about the Battle of the Boyne.â
Exuberance usually triumphs over solemnity however. A wonderful piece of comedy dialogue sees Foyle and Crawford engaged in a crazy verbal bidding war:
With this pristine copy of Paul Muldoon 1968-1999,
I see your bet
and raise you a bottle of red.
Itâs a review copy
and you havenât reviewed it yet,
so technically itâs not yours to bet.
Iâm going to review it.
Iâll bet you the right to review it.
Okey doke. Iâll raise you the duty to review The Love Letters of Dylan
Thomas and Irish Nocturnes and the next history of the Troubles ...
Throughout the sequence, right up to the last poem âLeaving Belfastâ with its tearful note of parting and sorrow, Foyleâs tribute and commemoration is worthy of the trust that she says was placed in her by Mairtin Crawfordâs family and friends.
No Enemy but Time is rounded out by four Aislingi which are dream- or vision-poems. The first of these (which gives the book its title) imagines the Gore-Booth sisters, Eva and Constance, taking issue with W B Yeats about the truth of his couplet âThe innocent and the beautiful / Have no enemy but timeâ. âThe Progress of Processâ addresses the working-out of the Good Friday agreement ; and in challenging lines like âPeace was a cold lumpy gravy trainâ and âPeace was a decommissioned knuckledusterâ Foyle skilfully employs the same sort of vivid language and concrete imagery that enlivened the first part of the book. The section also includes a short piece triggered by another Yeats quotation and Foyleâs encounter with a young man in a seaside car park and, finally, a longer meditative poem (about the effect of Loyalist-Republican tensions in the ordinary lives of ordinary people) which is dedicated to the memory of Flo Crawford, Mairtinâs mother and hence completes the bookâs narrative arc very fittingly.
No Enemy but Time is a small but densely packed and very enjoyable collection, offering powerful emotional insights. Remembering how Foyle and Crawford joked about reviewing, I am bound to say that writing about this book has been much more of a pleasure than a duty.
by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2017 • Tags: books, poetry, Thomas Ovans • 0 Comments
Thomas Ovans admires a poetic memoir by Naomi Foyle which celebrates the life of the Belfast writer and activist Mairtin Crawford
The major part of this pamphlet consists of poems in memory of Belfast writer and cultural activist Mairtin Crawford. Crawfordâs name may not be familiar to all London Grip readers; but Naomi Foyle is doubly qualified to write about him. In the first place she has edited his Selected Poems (Lagan Press 2015); and furthermore â as the poems make clear â she was also a personal friend. But can poems convey a real sense of a person whom readers have never met?
The first two poems provide some quick outlines, rather like preliminary sketches for a major painting. But, paradoxically, Crawford begins really to come to life in the poems which deal with his death. âGhost Writer (1)â imagines Crawfordâs reactions to his own funeral
Some in the congregation dare to speculate (in a variation on words by war poet Charles Sorley) that âyou wouldnât have minded being deadâ and that âyouâd been plotting for years to/ slide off mid-actâ. Crawfordâs death was due to a brain haemorrhage and Foyle uses the darkly humorous remark âTrust you to die / of something I canât spellâ to be doubly revealing about both herself and her subject.
The poem âBloody Mindedâ â an intentionally daring title, given the manner of Crawfordâs death â begins to flesh out a picture of a rebellious, visionary risk-taker
Other vivid glimpses occur in âAuthorisationâ when, in Manhattan, âyou shot at random strangers / with a yellow water pistolâ and in âConflicting Reportsâ where, in order to account for a black eye,
Behind all this of course lie serious issues of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland; and as well as describing the reactions of Crawford, the âdie-hard Irish romanticâ, Foyle reveals how she herself has been touched by the Troubles. She recalls a day when âBloody Sunday was being exhumedâ and when she herself was experiencing personal loss:
That throw-away prison reference is masterly. Elsewhere, as if to complement Crawfordâs bluntly dismissive âThe RUC. Those âOrange bastardsââ, Foyle offers her own onomatopoeic recollection of a July 12th when âBelfast Orangemen were banging on / about the Battle of the Boyne.â
Exuberance usually triumphs over solemnity however. A wonderful piece of comedy dialogue sees Foyle and Crawford engaged in a crazy verbal bidding war:
Throughout the sequence, right up to the last poem âLeaving Belfastâ with its tearful note of parting and sorrow, Foyleâs tribute and commemoration is worthy of the trust that she says was placed in her by Mairtin Crawfordâs family and friends.
No Enemy but Time is rounded out by four Aislingi which are dream- or vision-poems. The first of these (which gives the book its title) imagines the Gore-Booth sisters, Eva and Constance, taking issue with W B Yeats about the truth of his couplet âThe innocent and the beautiful / Have no enemy but timeâ. âThe Progress of Processâ addresses the working-out of the Good Friday agreement ; and in challenging lines like âPeace was a cold lumpy gravy trainâ and âPeace was a decommissioned knuckledusterâ Foyle skilfully employs the same sort of vivid language and concrete imagery that enlivened the first part of the book. The section also includes a short piece triggered by another Yeats quotation and Foyleâs encounter with a young man in a seaside car park and, finally, a longer meditative poem (about the effect of Loyalist-Republican tensions in the ordinary lives of ordinary people) which is dedicated to the memory of Flo Crawford, Mairtinâs mother and hence completes the bookâs narrative arc very fittingly.
No Enemy but Time is a small but densely packed and very enjoyable collection, offering powerful emotional insights. Remembering how Foyle and Crawford joked about reviewing, I am bound to say that writing about this book has been much more of a pleasure than a duty.