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Falling
into Monaghan
is a study of the poet's 'settlement in the west' - in South Ulster
on the border territory near the Slieve Beagh mountains. It deals
with the consciousness of a kind of desolation that is sometimes
bitter, often vigorous, frequently comic. Filtered through this,
uniquely, are commentaries on Gerry Hull's London Irish/Italian
background.
About
Falling into Monaghan
'you know these people ... there's a kindness there that comes
through the study'
John Montague
'this
is valuable work' James Simmons
'this
will delight - and frighten a lot of people'
Noel Monahan
Gerald
Hull comes from a 'mixed generation' Irish-American family
in London and has lived in Ireland for over twenty years,
settling in Fivemiletown in Tyrone. He holds a Ph.D from the
University of Wales and in recent years has been associated
with the Pushkin Prize, Oliver Goldsmith and William Carleton
International Summer Schools. He is poetry editor for The Spark
Review in Fermanagh and Northern Correspondent for Windows and
First Edition. Gerry Hull has read throughout Ireland and gained
bursaries from Poetry Ireland and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
He is widely published and, fitting for one whose poetry is
fixated on the border counties, was guest editor for the acclaimed
South-West edition of The Honest Ulsterman (HU). This is his
first full collection.
A
Poem from--
Falling into Monaghan
by GERALD HULL
Falling
Into Monaghan
for Margaret
'No
hospitality is dangerous because
of the suspicion of murder.'
- Gerald of Wales
A
spirit stung your heel between mists,
laminate hexed will: a Tara evening, morning
in Tyrone. Your family would pluck us back,
you three parts Eurydice. We turned from
Tudor Park to horses, the old railway.
And
penetrated high ground. Aeolus loud
with harmonica, falling into Monaghan,
a Land of Cockaigne. Teasing hard at
Newbliss, Aughnacloy: street signs in
bars, their photos of seedsmen fresh
in our minds. The unknown over hills,
far away; switchbridges, lines awry.
Un-British, a giddy vertigo where cars
hobbled off, bicycles waved and colours
ran ill-defined.
Returning
up a scabbed border by Drumfurrer
we smelt the dead, the cattle unburied.
People had emptied, dark holding down.
Then
shock of reeling light spread copper
over backing plains. Our heads roared with gold;
translated into birds we fell to a drowning moon.
Countrymen's words gripped our clowning, on
through a hundred townlands.
Annaghmakerrig 1996
©
Copyright Gerald Hull, 1999
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