Poet Louis de Paor found the Australian cultural melting pot a liberating experience. Larry Schwartz reports.
BEFORE settling here almost a decade ago, Louis de Paor thought he understood quite a bit about faraway Australia. Looking back, it occurs to him, he knew “nothing, absolutely nothing; everything I thought I knew was wrong”.
At the time, he imagined that half the population was Aboriginal and racial tensions had been resolved.
“I expected there would be Aboriginal people working in banks,” he says. “Aboriginal policemen, Aboriginal businessmen.
” He was oblivious to the extent and impact of post-war migration and never expected to hear so many languages “jostling and bumping each other in the most healthy possible way”.
For the Cork-born poet, migration was liberating. Back in bilingual Ireland, there was a wariness of the indigenous language. To speak it, as he does, could be taken as a political stance.
“To come here, where it’s just the most natural thing in the world to speak in your own language and not cause comments or cause controversy is wonderful.”
A scarcity of nursing jobs for his partner had led to his departure from Ireland in 1987. De Paor has hosted an Irish language program on SBS radio that has given him access to the visiting compatriots he has long admired including Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and musician Donal Lunny. Otherwise, he is at home in Coburg, dividing his time between five children and his verse and translation.
On the eve of his departure for a year-long visit to Ireland, the award-winning Irish language poet has released a second collection of poems with his own English translations. Two collections released before he came to Australia had won Ireland’s prestigious Sean O’Riordan prize.
His first Australian book, `Aimsir Bhreicneach/ Freckled Weather’, won the Dinny O’Hearn/ SBS Bookshow Award for Literary Translation in 1994 and sold 1000 copies, “which apparently makes it one of the three or four best-selling books of poetry in Australia in the last few years”.
His new collection, `Goban Cre Is Cloch/ Sentences of Earth and Stone’, should enhance his reputation. An edition without English translation will soon be available in Ireland.
He might have to explain some antipodean references.
“When the cops took his son/ their bright batons left their mark/ on his broken body, the nails on their polished boots/pierced his skin . . .”.
Lines from a poem, `Assimilation’, inspired by an ABC-TV documentary about Aboriginal footballers: “A man called Kickett is telling about the day his family was taken from him”.
Other poems reveal affection for his children. A long poem called `The Cornfield’ reminds him not only of childhood adventures in a forbidden part of town but that he is now the parent, as likely as his were to agonise when his children venture into places of risk.
In Australia, De Paor has found time and opportunity to refine his craft. “One of the terrific things that has happened to me in Australia is that the funding situation here has enabled me to spend a much greater time writing than I would have been able to in Ireland,” he says.
He has no qualms about receiving public money to pursue his craft. “I’m not at all embarrassed about (it). I’m very proud of having been paid public money for what I’ve done.
I take the responsibility very seriously as I am sure most people who get that money do. I feel in some way that I have contributed back.”
SUCH is the diversity of Australian writing that he sees himself as less marginalised as an Irish language writer here than he would be back in Ireland where, coincidentally, he is going on 16 June, Bloomsday, the day on which James Joyce’s Dublin- based novel `Ulysses’ is set.
“I know that I’m going to land in Dublin airport and I’m going to my brother’s wedding in Roscommon and after that I’ve got no idea. I’ve applied for two jobs. One is in Coleraine in the north of Ireland and the other is in Limerick in the west. If neither of those come through, I’ll probably be on the dole.”
Talk ranges from football – he is passionate about Richmond though not as much a footy fan as he is of the Irish sport of hurling – to the accessibility of his former local MP, Phil Cleary, whose approach all but (but not quite) cured his scepticism of politicians.
From the dour Van Morrison to Emmylou Harris, talk turns to Irish mythology and the story of Diarmuid who runs away with Grainne. She is betrothed to the ageing king, Fionn. Fionn eventually kills the lovers. Despite his remorse, the king resists the temptation to revive Diarmuid.
De Paor sings the praises of Dmitris Tsaloumas, the Greek- born, Melbourne poet, whom he nominates as “the best in Australia”.
He describes a scene in Coburg that inspired one of his works. Every Saturday, Greek men seem to transform part of the suburb into a village square from their homeland. “Everything about them – their gestures, the worry beads, the language they’re speaking – is Greek.”
Greek and Irish cultures meet in a theatrical venture in which he has been involved as part of a collaboration called 3 Words for Green, with comedian Mary Kenneally and the Giorgos Xylouris Ensemble, featuring music, verse and song.
De Paor has had a long interest in the relationship between music and poetry that he describes as “a rhythmic form of language”. Traditionally, Irish poetry was performed to a harp accompaniment, he says.
“We started experimenting a bit with that some years ago and we gradually extended it so that it’s not just Irish music that we use . . . you’ve got Irish musicians playing Greek tunes with Irish instruments and Greek musicians playing Irish tunes. There are certain parts of the poems where dancers appear and they actually dance an interpretation and go off again and all the rhythms are all mixed.”
Greek and Irish cultures may not be compatible in Crete or Cork “but here in Australia where you’ve got all these possibilities happening and what’s created out of them is Australian”.
`Goban Cre Is Cloch/ Sentences of Earth and Stone’ is published by Black Pepper.
THE SUNDAY AGE, 09-Jun-1996
Larry Schwartz Writer 