THERE is a lot of hope here in Ireland, you know.
There are a lot of people, young and old, out there in the lanes and streets of Ireland who have responded to what has happened there in a way that we can all take comfort in.
They are shaping their anger and sense of injustice into something we can all take refuge in.
They are out there and they are making an idea of Ireland and in doing so they might just make it an Ireland, a country, we can all live in again.
We always need to interrogate the idea of our country and to hold it up to a bright light.
That is what these people are doing. These and many others like them.
They have been heard during the inaugural Irish People’s Poetry Prize 2015, which has just been held.
It was dreamed up and created by citizens of the Republic of Ireland, who in opposition to the institutions and formal establishments that have created a country in the image of a few, have offered a vision of a different image and a different country.
Focusing on an art form, spoken and oral, that Ireland is famous for, the People’s Poetry Prize has sought to celebrate something our successive governments have only ever assessed in terms of revenue.
The People’s Poetry Prize is a riposte to this and to a literary establishment that has been co-opted in to thinking that way too.
It is a gust and a blast of fresh air. Something coming up from beneath us and beside us, rather than a lofty missive dropped on us from above.
Anyone and everyone can go online, and through the bogmanscannon.com or by simply typing in the Irish People’s Poetry Prize, check out all of the 12 entries posted online.
They can hear there a whole range of Irish voices talking directly about what it is like to be alive here in Ireland now and see exactly how this generation of Irish people is making that into poetry and word and art.
The entries range from professionally shot videos, through talking selfies, to the winner’s shaky mobile phone footage of a reading at a water charge’s protest.
The fact that the winning entry consists of video footage where the sound quality is affected by the wind and on at least two occasion someone walks across the screen tells you all you need to know about this prize.
The 2015 winner of the prize, Sarah Clancy’s And yet We Must Live In These Times is a more than worthy winner, a poem about anger and rage and vulnerability in the face of unemployment and homelessness.
If you get the chance to listen to it do because in doing so you will get to hear how so many Irish people are feeling, here, now, in these times.
Yet, the beauty of this prize, in this its inaugural year, is that by freely accessing all 12 of the entrants anyone can hear what Ireland sounds like below the babble and noise that fill our airwaves and screens.
That is why I’m writing about it and why I urge you all, if at all possible, to go online and take a look and a listen.
Hear what Irish people think and see how they’ve responded to what has happened to our Republic.
In response to winning, Sarah Clancy wrote this, ‘we live in times that desperately need a language that’s not of the boardroom, not of the IMF or the IFA or the GAA or RCC or the Troika or of IBEC.’
Which is where this all comes in. I urge all of you out there to hear a different Ireland, to listen to a different country and share in the hope that this whole venture offers.
As Sarah Clancy goes on to write, in Ireland over the last two decades we have found that our institutions and our culture has sought to warp us, that it does not fit us.
Well, be assured that there has been a response to that and that the Irish people are still alive and kicking.
Please check it out. Take a look, have a listen. Tell others about it. You won’t regret it.
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