This week Cullen native Bernard O’Donoghue was added to the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, which is part of a project to create a central repository for poetry readings by Irish poets and writers, which tries to capture and preserve the rich and diverse landscape of poetry in Ireland. The collection captures the voice of the poet reading a selection of their work, and giving a very brief overview of the context and circumstances that influenced the writing of the poem. Below are nine videos of Bernards poems, and also at the end, a long video in which he talks about the beauty of the work of Seamus Heaney:
Ter Conatus – on a brother and sister that live their lives on a farm together until one of them dies and the other is left alone
The Weakness – on the suddenness of a heart attack in the early morning
Westering Home – on the excitement of heading home to Ireland
The NutHatch – on watching a bird
The Iron Age boat at Caumatruish – on Thade Mullane’s iron age boat at Caumatruish
The Day I outlived my Father
Munster Final – On the great Tom Creedon
In Millstreet Hospital
A Candle for Dolly Duggan
Human Chain and Seamus Heaney’s larger significance and impact
In Worldwide literature his is a well known name
For many years Bernard O Donoghue has stood on the poetic hill of fame
It truly can be said of him with words he has a way
One of the major poets of the Poetry World of today
Far from Cullen his home-place not that far from Millstreet Town
Bernard is one who knows of great literary renown
As a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature he is up there with the best
One can say of him he has passed the poetic test
In The Irish Poetry Reading Archive and a former winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize
To the top of the milk the cream always does rise
A down to earth fellow for one who is famous and well known
One can say of him in a class of his own
Yet in Millstreet or Cullen for him there has never been a street parade
Of far lesser mortals far more has been made
But in kilometers far from Cullen and Millstreet
He does remain famous where great minds do meet
That he is a great poet of him cannot be denied
But on his seventieth year time is not on his side
And eventually time becomes everyone’s foe
I knew him as a boy many decades ago
It can be said of Bernard he has the inner glow
And his status as a poet it only does grow
He left Cullen for Oxford before his physical prime
And this is going back many Seasons in time.
“On Bernard O Donoghue” is by Francis Duggan
http://francisrhymer.blogspot.ie/2015/11/on-bernard-o-donoghue.html
(mdc)
I quote from poem above by fd “Of far more lesser mortals more has been made”I disagree,who is to judge whether anyone is lesser or greater?Anybody who contributes in any way to their community is worthy of praise and gratitude.