In 1963 I found myself on route to teacher training college in Manchester to pursue a vocation in secondary education, and after qualifying, I taught in a large co-educational institution in Salford close to Old Trafford. Soon those outward-bound trips to the Lake District took me to Grasmere, where I discovered the origins for Wordsworth’s “a host of golden daffodils.”and Ann Hathaways iconic cottage. Here I was no longer detached from the source of those once parroted verses in the classroom, or challenged to interpret what the author might have meant from a particular phrase or expression in test situations. Now I was in situ, where the poetry had been conceived, moulded and recorded in its simplicity and unassuming narrative.
One source of unintentional influence to be gratefully acknowledge was inadvertently generated by a college friend in Manchester who, from his own literary pursuits, was an authority on the works of Dylan Thomas. He introduced me to the audio version of Thomas reciting “Under Milk Wood” and I was immediately struck by Dylan’s voice energy, and the visual sensuousness of the piece that immediately drew you into the picture as a collaborator rather than a mere spectator. I loved this feeling, when the power of the vocabulary enabled one to be part of the narrative, an active participant, capable of feeling the emotions and intrigue as generated by the author.
Then during a first vacation spent in England, student work brought me to Slough Buckinghamshire, close to Stoke Poges and Grey’s Elegy in a country graveyard. I visited the location more out of curiosity than interest. The significance of this site and its literary and historical importance was lost on me, for on this occasion, my general focus and fascination here was on the elitism associated with Eton College and the unashamed parading of outward privilege typified by long tail morning suits and bow ties.
As I sat during breaks from my work in hospitality on the lush playing fields of Eton, I was struck by the contrast in these young men’s schooling to that of my own in a converted classroom beneath the parochial hall. Regardless of the disparity in experiences I soon discovered that the movie. “Arabesque” featuring Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck was being shot in Windsor and outside the gates of Eton. Then all my free time shifted to observing in close proximity the intricacies of movie making, and how these star actors delivered their dialogue.
And then that cathartic moment some six years later, when I returned home to a teaching post in Belfast. As part of form teacher duties, I organised a year 10 assembly in that November, a month in which we remember the dead. At a loss for a theme the head of English handed me Seamus Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist” and said, ‘get the boys to read one line after each other on the stage from the poem “Mid Term Break”, white shirts black ties.’
Not a single ripple of sound happened in the Assembly Hall among the 200 when the final line was quietly delivered. The way that one poem settled in my being changed outlook and perspectives in a manner that fuelled my desire to learn more about the power of words to inspire, unsettle give expression to that inner self that often seeks ways to be creative. And so, my love affair with language began, firstly with simple written memory pieces stored in a box under the bed until I was invited to join the writer’s group in Seamus Heaney Centre QUB, and for the next 10 years or more I learned from the master Ciaran Carson, how to listen and consume power of the word.
From all of this exposure there grew a sense that I was equally capable of accounting and recording my experiences arising from the people and places from the home place who had influenced my journey from childhood to adulthood. Six children reared in Newry Street, Kilkeel, and each in turn departed on their own vocational journey. My youngest brother Peadar became a graphic designer, then set up his printing business in Canada and developed his fine arts portfolio in tandem with his business. His cover painting used for my collection Halfway House hangs in my study, I like the way it opens out from settlement onto mountain landscape, Slieve Muck on the road to Spelga.
