I might do a blog about my one but, for now... Nixie told me to get myself into gear and write a story on the same day that a Northern Irish poet called Padraic Fiacc died. He's not especially well known as he decided to eschew the lyrical route and to write about the 'Troubles' instead - and quite politically. But he did some gorgeous poems, one of which I knew well as a teenager called Goodbye to Brigid, which includes the second stanza:
My little girl, my Lamb of God
I'd like to set you free from
Bitch Belfast as we pass the armed-to-the-back-teeth barracks and
Descend the road into the school grounds of broken windows from
A spate of car-bombs, but don't forgive me for not.
At the time, people were leaving Northern Ireland for just about anywhere else and any parent who chose to stay had guilt around that. As most people here know, I'm Northern Irish to my back teeth, so suffice to say my family stayed (well out of the main trouble spots, to be fair).
In addition to that, Michael Longley wrote a poem about an ice cream seller who was killed during the Troubles (a distant relative of mine, as it happens) and he lists the ice cream flavours as part of the poem:
Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road.
I tried to get that vibe and rhythm into my list of influences BUT, also, I'm surrounded by poets over here (I love them all dearly, but it's like a tribal run of them!
) and I wanted to list some of my influences, so those au fait with our genres will see reference to Bob Shaw, James Whyte, Ian McDonald and CS Lewis as well as the poets.
As I said, when I posted it, I didn't expect many to get the nuances within the little tale - so was delighted it got as many mentions as it did.
My little girl, my Lamb of God
I'd like to set you free from
Bitch Belfast as we pass the armed-to-the-back-teeth barracks and
Descend the road into the school grounds of broken windows from
A spate of car-bombs, but don't forgive me for not.
At the time, people were leaving Northern Ireland for just about anywhere else and any parent who chose to stay had guilt around that. As most people here know, I'm Northern Irish to my back teeth, so suffice to say my family stayed (well out of the main trouble spots, to be fair).
In addition to that, Michael Longley wrote a poem about an ice cream seller who was killed during the Troubles (a distant relative of mine, as it happens) and he lists the ice cream flavours as part of the poem:
Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road.
I tried to get that vibe and rhythm into my list of influences BUT, also, I'm surrounded by poets over here (I love them all dearly, but it's like a tribal run of them!
) and I wanted to list some of my influences, so those au fait with our genres will see reference to Bob Shaw, James Whyte, Ian McDonald and CS Lewis as well as the poets. As I said, when I posted it, I didn't expect many to get the nuances within the little tale - so was delighted it got as many mentions as it did.
