SO I'm in the summer 2009 issue of the Shop. (Please buy one, they're struggling for funds. Actually it doesn't show up on the website yet so you can get this as BREAKING NEWS.
Anyway, they noted that they received few submissions of poems on dark but important matters such as terrorism, torture, political corruption, slavery, child labour, people trafficking, denial of women's rights (surely loads of those?) religious persecution.
They had an "abundant response"
The trouble is, mine's included and that's not what it's about. My poem is reportage from a lady I knew, of where she put the blame for the Irish tendency to swear a lot. But if you read my poem alongside some of the others, you could interpret it as agreeing with her. And it is all the fault of the squaddies. I don't. That's the point.
Other poets included are:
Gerald Dawe, Eva Bourke, Paddy Bushe, Harry Clifton, Derek Mahon, Gabriel Rosenstock, Matthew Sweeney and lots of names unfamiliar to me for now.
3 comments:
Read your poem in THE SHOp. I don't think there's any danger the reader thinks you agree with the "blame the British" theme - the irony/sarcasm of the self delusion comes across very well. Well done!
Thanks Michael. I've been thinking about a way of finding out if there's any truth in it. I know the army has a reputation for swearing but how would I find out if the non-army population swore?
I not sure how you might go about proving it but I can't see any justification for the theory that swearing was introduced into Ireland by British troops. It sounds nonsensical - like no sex before television. Anyway many British soldiers were Irish. It is possible though that particular swearwords were introduced by this means at particular times. In the same way I'm sure Irish emigrants introduced some elements of "bad language" into other countries.
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