Howling for Censorship: Censorship, publicity and the Howl Trial

I wrote this a few years ago, but since they made a movie of it have decided to put it up. It uses the Howl trial to show how the censor can be a pretty good publicist!

Howling for Censorship:

Censorship, publicity and the Howl Trial

When Ginsberg was ten years old he took his fathers copy of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland to his room. On discovering it missing his father quickly took the illegal book away from the child. However, this is not where John Cleland and Allen Ginsberg parted ways; later a common fate was to tie them together. As Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure made censorship history by being the first known U.S. obscenity case involving a book and its publisher, Ginsberg’s Howl And Other Poems made history by being the first book and publisher brought to trial that won on the basis of the Roth case. Seven years later the ban on Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was finally lifted, also using the ruling of the Roth case, and could join Howl And Other Poems, Ulysses and other controversial books on the shelves.

Since John Cleland’s book was banned and its publisher arrested, the U.S. has seen Chaucer, Aristophances, Daniel Defoe, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, D.H. Lawrence, Théophile Gautier, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoi, Walt Whitman and Henry Miller on the censored books list. However, legal censorship often has an adverse affect and makes the books it aims to prevent reaching the public more visible; the outcry against being suppressed gains public sympathy, curiosity, and attention making books and their authors famous. As Coetzee points out in his book Giving Offense

The book that is suppressed gets more attention as a ghost than it would have had alive; the writer who is gagged today is famous tomorrow for having been gagged.(Coetzee 43)

In his analysis of censorship Coetzee looks at Russia under Stalin, noting that the communist leader rarely arrested writers. He believes it was the recognition of the ability of writing to prosper under scrutiny that stayed Stalin’s hand, knowing that repressing a talented writer was often the very thing that would immortalize their work and their message.

The word of the master author has a disseminative power that goes beyond purely mechanical means of dissemination. The master’s word, particularly in cultures where an oral base survives can spread by word of mouth, or from hand to hand in carbon copies (samizdat’, literally, self publication); even when the word itself is not spread, it can be replaced by rumours itself (Coetzee 43)

When Mandelstam was arrested for reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to his friends and associates the leader questioned Boris Pasternak and asked if he was a master writer. Pasternak correctly took this to be a question over whether or not he would be disposable. When told the poet was indispensable Mandelstam was sentenced to internal exile. Stalin rarely arrested writers but instead made them apologize and many like Mandelstam ended up writing poems in his favour. While he rarely censored writers he made them censor themselves through fear; Mandelstam’s wife recalls destroying some of his poetry and describes the Stalin’s method as being akin to having their tongues cut out and being forced to glorify him with the stumps. Coetzee went further in this analysis describing the method as a form of poet castration.

Stalin and his apparatus castrated a generation of writers, robbing it not only of its generative power but of its power of historical witness and therefore of its political power. By the wounds he inflicted, Stalin in effect ensured that he could not be repudiated even after his death; by this means he intended to guarantee himself a backhand immortality (Coetzee 113)

Though it often appears in different forms there has always been censorship; in some cases it is the writer in the editing or even destruction of a book, the publisher in refusing to take it on board or omitting parts of the text, or the public by refusing to read the material. Often, however, the censor is legal and comes with drastic consequences like imprisonment, or in some places death. It is this legal censor that often acts as a publicist and brings books from obscurity into the public domain.

The United States of America in the 1950’s was a very different place to Stalin’s Russia, people were not afraid to state their opinions for fear of being executed, but selling obscene books did carry jail time and could financially cripple businesses. When Howl And Other Poems was first printed in 1956 Ginsberg was an unknown writer struggling to make ends meet and Lawrence Ferlinghetti was new to the publishing scene with City Lights Press still in it’s first year. While Ginsberg’s book was a form of social critique, which painted a very unflattering picture of the U.S. government Ferlinghetti was not worried about the political content; he was concerned with the use of offensive words. So, with Ginsberg’s help, he blanked out many of the four letter words to avoid being censored and contacted the Civil Liberties Union to see if they would come to their aid if there were an issue. Concern would be raised about the language and descriptions rather than the political ideas expressed.

When, on March 25^th 1957, 520 copies of Howl And Other Poems were seized it came as a surprise to both writer and publisher. Prior to getting copies printed in England Ginsberg articulated doubts over the necessity for extra copies of the book in a letter to Lawrence, as he did not believe it could sell that many.

Why [reprint] 1500 copies?? Can you sell them? There are a number in the 8^th St. Bookshop, buried under Rexroth’s title, but nobody I know in the Village has seen or bought it. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 49)

However when he heard news of the seizure he immediately recommended journalists Ferlinghetti could contact for publicity. Ferlinghetti had a similar reaction and ordered an extra 2500 copies to be printed in the US and thanked MacPhee in the San Francisco Chronicle for the free publicity.

San Francisco Collector of Customs deserves a word of thanks for seizing Allen Ginsberg's “Howl And Other Poems and Other Poems” and thereby rendering it famous. Perhaps we could have a medal made. It would have taken years for critics to accomplish what the good collector did in a day, merely by calling the book obscene. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 107)

The situation was not seen as a big threat, Howl And Other Poems seemed to benefit more than anything else. But when the Howl And Other Poems publisher resurfaced in the press again it was a lot more serious; a City Lights Bookstore employee had been arrested for selling the book, so Ferlinghetti had handed himself over to the police putting his business on the line and risking jail time.

Ginsberg, on hearing of the arrests, felt revolutionary and expressed a wish to return all of the offensive four letter words to the text if the book won its case. He also wished to read the poem Howl in public again believing the poem had achieved a new level of realism by being suppressed and fantasized about being dragged away by police. His reflections on repression had proven real and the poem rang more true for him than it did before.

It might give it a reality as a “social protest” I always feared it was lacking without the armed bands of outraged Gestapo. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 63)

Rather than destroying remaining poems and writing Odes to his suppressers as Mandelstam felt forced to do in Russia, Ginsberg wanted to make the offense larger, to challenge the censors further. Censorship proved to be inspiring for his writing and motivated him to publicize his book further.

The trial was watched by many in the literary community, as two months previous to Ferlinghetti’s arrest the Roth case had finished, though it had delivered a guilty verdict it set a new precedent for other obscenity cases which would be applied for the first time in the Howl And Other Poems trial. This stated that “All ideas even having the slightest redeeming social importance – unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of change” (MacMillan 375)

The defense used this new ruling as its main argument for the book calling forward nine different literary experts and writers to testify as to the poems literary importance. He also gave details of other books that had been classified as obscene in the past stating that works that often go down in history for their literary merit are often suppressed at first by those that do not understand them.

Your Honour, what shall I quote to convey the thought that great works and classics of literature are at first condemned by those who see destruction in everything they cannot understand and find pornographic skeletons in every closet?

I point out that Voltaire’s Candide was originally condemned as obscene because it dealt with sex. But even the prosecution’s star witness says that this work is a classic. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 193)

He went onto add that anything can be twisted into something unsavory if people are so inclined, but in the same light others who keep an open mind can find beauty in the same materials.

Words dealing with and describing sex do not destroy literary merit….Seek filth and you will find it. Seek beauty of narration and you will find that too. But to find filth you must search for it with a wanton mind and a willing application. Any book can be declared unsafe since a moron could pervert to some sexual fantasy to which his mind is open the listings in a seed catalogue. Not even the Bible would be exempt (Morgan, Howl On Trial 193)

The judge was in agreement and in his deliberations spoke out against the censorship of literature, stating that different words are used in all walks of life and that a word can have various meanings in different contexts. The case was dismissed setting censorship history. The actions of Ferlinghetti in publishing the poem and putting his livelihood on the line defending it inspired many other law cases. Grove Press, who also published poems by Ginsberg, began an expensive campaign to clear banned books of literary significance and in 1965 was brought to court for William Bouroughs Naked Lunch a book Ginsberg helped to edit and defended on the witness stand.

While in current times people still try and get books banned it is almost unheard of significant works of literature to get legally censored, however that is not to say that censorship does not still exist. On November 24^th 1987 Federal Communications Commission decided that indecent material could only be aired on the radio between midnight and 6am. The question of what was indecent came into play and again the poem Howl faced censorship. Following a costly trial after airing a programme on homosexuality Pacifica was reluctant to broadcast Ginsberg’s famous poem, which was due to be aired on many stations as part of a weeklong protest against censorship called “Open Ears/Open Minds”.

This ban was more insidious than the first because it was the self-censoring stations themselves who prohibited his poetry, for fear of losing their licenses. Allen found that he had no law to fight, no statute to overturn. His poem was not obscene, but still it could not be read. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 222)

The hours were eventually extended and a 6am to 8pm ban was put in place. Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg were unable to do anything as there was no law to overturn, Howl was being censored by the radio stations for fear that it would be deemed obscene. There was no need for legal censorship fear alone had made radio stations over cautious about what they put on air and so they censored themselves.

This form of self censorship is the most common in Britain and America today. In certain parts of America schools and libraries refuse to stock Harry Potter because it goes against Christian beliefs. Sometimes the books find it hard or even impossible to get through a publishing house. This self-censorship is a lot wider than before as they are not just being censored for obscenity now, but also political and economic interests. As a lot of publishers are now part of conglomerates there is less that can be said without offending someone in the company or related to the company; there is also the company’s reputation and other books with conflicting views to consider. A well-known case in recent years was when Harper Collins would not publish Chris Patens book for fear of damaging relations with China. In the BBC News article ‘Rupert Murdoch faces authors' revolt’ Roy Greenslade correctly assessed in situation when he stated that in a business as big as Harper Collins, there will be conflicts between editors who want to publish freely and managers who might be trying to do deals with the people and organizations their editors are criticizing.

Legal censorship of the 1950’s was a battle against unreasonable officials, but the most common form of modern censorship is, like in Stalin’s Russia, driven by fear. Conglomerates fear of damaging the company’s reputation, relations, profits or simply clashing with other publications in another part of the company. Radio stations censor materials for fear of losing their licenses, their reputation and to avoid lengthy legal battles. As the censors of today are often the very organizations that fought to publish controversial books in the past a lot of books simply never get made. There is also the drawback that if people censor themselves and simply do not read your book, or make others embarrassed to read it there is no cause for outcry. There is no large oppressor to fight, no cause for media hysteria and support, the book simply fades into obscurity and dies.

To date City Lights pocket book version of Howl And Other Poems has sold almost a million copies, Allen Ginsberg has become one of the most famous poets in the world and the publisher Ferlinghetti himself managed to sell over a million copies of his own book “A Coney Island of the Mind” going on to become Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Had Howl And Other Poems been published to day it may not have received the same level of fame, and if it had it would have been a lot slower route and not have the same level of publicity. As Luther Williams aptly put it on the stand:

The best possibility now in Howl’s survival is for it’s value as a bit of literary history. I think this case will draw attention to it. It, perhaps, will have a wider readership than it might have otherwise had, and may go down in history as a stepping-stone along the way to greater or lesser liberality in the permitting of poems in its type of expression. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 150)

Poetry best sellers are now made by Nobel Prize committees and other literary panels. The books must pass through all levels of scrutiny and spend years trying to make it the top. Then a different type of literary judge awards them fame, and even then the public interest and sales figures are unlikely to reach that of Howl And Other Poems. For small publishers and unknown writers legal censorship can be a blessing in disguise.

Appendix

Books

Morgan, Bill and Peters, Nancy J. Howl on Trial. Ed. Bill Morgan. San Francisco. City Lights Books. 2006

Coetzee, J.M. Giving Offense Ed. J.M. Coetzee. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 1996.

MacMillan, P.R. Censorship and Public Morality Ed. England. Gower Publishing Company Ltd. 1983

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl And Other Poems. Ed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. San Francisco. City Lights Books. 1967.

Websites

City Lights Bookstore

www.citylights.com.

San Francisco Chronicle: A howl that still echoes

http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/28/DD27873.DTL

Allen Ginsberg Official Website

http://www.allenginsberg.org/

Interview with Ginsberg

http://www.zorca.com/ginsberg/

History: Getting obscenity on the books

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/kane/30scensorship/beginning.htm

Rupert Murdoch faces authors' revolt http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/analysis/61122.stm

http://censoredbooks.blogspot.com/

a carnival with naked lunch

Welcome to Carnival, a colourful little bar with collage walls in reds, and greens, and blues. Poets sit inside here twitching anxiously by candlelight waiting for naked lunch to start.

Naked lunch is not some sordid afternoon debauchery but a wonderful amalgamation of poetry and music, mixed together to keep you constantly in a dreamy euphoria with no time for brain freeze or boredom. Poet after poet dropped beautiful bombshells,musicians ached missiles and we lay in the debris with grins on our faces feeling a little better off for all of it.

Living in England among publishers I still manage to get in my dose of poetry, reading books in my small attic room to avoid the big brother hysteria below; but something was missing, there were no voices.

When I visited ailbhe in London I demanded poetry read out loud, she lied and said she had none….I told her I wanted lions in the living room so she sat me by her computer with a willing john and a poetry Ireland cd and let me listen to some audio files while she and gareth got drunk on stories outside. And in wexford last weekend I joined the boys, hiding from the sunshine with their beers in the living room, and produced my lions and told them they had to read to me. So Sean took on the role, begrudgingly, and I sat there grinning as lions ate my soul for decades. Mark read us into a Norwegian depression and finally I read to them about fingerprint on pillow cases, then we sang some songs until I was evicted.

It was the accents that made the naked lunch experience so wonderful, the country poet who wrote about a girl with a face like a whore, the American who made me feel like my brain was tripping all over the gaf and the beautiful dubs, wonderfully mispronouncing words, dropping letters and giving them all the more character.

I miss Dublin and it's voices and it's cruel sense of humour. I miss the political incorrectness, giggling over things we shouldn't and insulting each other in new and inventive ways. In Wexford I was shocked to silence when I teased darran and he replied in his quiet and polite manner "you know clodagh, some people might say it's rather needy of you to come all the way from England to spend a weekend with people who don't really like you" then his voice took on a puzzled tone and he continued "do you think you're still part of the gang after a years absence". It shocked me to hear lovely old darran turn mean, but the weekend got meaner still with mark dubbing it "freak out clodagh weekend" and Stephen making inverted comas in the air everytime I used the word "friend". And Stephen with his lovely sarcy dub accent imploring anytime someone mentioned books or poetry "you got an English degree yeah, you went to college".

But still my friends who hate me and tell me so in the most wonderful accents took me to a bar where Aoife Mannix, the featured poet of the night, cut out words with her beautiful dub voice, hanging up all her animals and letting them dance within this carnival. I sat on a high seat like a child, grinning away in my multi-coloured dress listening to her weave clothes from everyday things and torture her young brother though he sat fully grown in the audience. After 12 years of living in London she retained her Dublin charms, sounding more dub than I ever could with my silly voice I must have picked off the back of a milk cartoon.

Afterwards I found Timmy who informed me only protestant girls were allowed to use call him Timmy, and Kevin Desmond who runs the monster truck poetry nights. Timmy told me about his pilgrimage and tried to explain why he had to leave a part of his church(they let catholics get holy communion) and join a stricter one while I giggled at him and abused his sweet sensitive nature.

A few years ago, in Café Enseine, Timmy accused me of being a sociopath; Aidan had related a story to us about a girl meeting a boy at her mothers funeral but then losing his number, a few days later she killed her sister and we were all asked why. I said that that way she would see the boy again, which was apparently the answer sociopaths gave- but timmy took the whole thing all too seriously and accused me of being genuinely mad. Well last night I turned the tables and accused him of insanity and he informed me quite seriously that he doesn't worry about going mad anymore because he would have done so already at this stage. And he speaks insanity, looking at me with those imploring genuine eyes that say "it all makes sense" but the eyes do not match the words or the crazy nature of our beloved Tim. His eyes laugh bashfully like it is I who speaks crazy and not him with his fresh grown pilgrimage beard and strange thoughts.

I walked back to town with Kevin Desmond who talked a mile a minute about poetry and how to make it, and how ailbhe and I are his flipside, irish poets moving to England. And he tells me that we have talent and we are pretty enough to be poets which makes me laugh a lot and remember poor Stephen- the giant boy child who in trying to be sweet one day informed me that I was pretty and smart enough to be a poets wife; but he goes on and on about photographs and videoing readings and the importance of live audio. He says that the monster truck montage of readings was spliced in such a way to take the word "fuck" out of ailbhes poem but that it's spirit hung there, the residue of removed obsenities still hanging visibly in the spirit of omitted words. And he speaks with such energy about writing switching from thought to thought with very little to connect the strands together. When I leave (something I regret doing) and insist on getting Timmys email address, he informs Tim that this is what ailbhe and I do- collect people for our galleries but then never return.

And he is right in a way, but it is not people we collect but experiences and to return to such things, to relive a perfect memory can often make it imperfect, tarnishing the original, it is holding onto something that is no longer there, living life like a tape stuck in a loop. We went to the monster truck gallery, once, and never returned- but we will do again, just not so often that it becomes stale for us. If I had not agreed to meet non-poets today I would be out there peopling my gallery with more carnival animals, cutting voices and lyrical unfinished words.

Mentalists in the Attic

I have bats on my brain. They squawk at me flapping their arms, concealing carnivores beneath their jumpers, threatening to publish me and stitch skin into thick volumes to print their demented tales on.

Leroy 'the big easy, oven bake' L'Haine, aka The Publisher tells us about his Paris adventures, of how bats nibbled through ceilings eating their landlady and forcing him to take drastic measures against the neighbours to prevent knowledge of their walker crisp, croissant and human flesh eating ways from becoming public. We smile and nod, he is mad and one day will be incarcerated in a chuck palahniuk horror story.

Ailbhe visited me for a bit of culture, but we can not be together too long as we become combustible, leaving a wake of charred brain cells and broken glasses behind us. My housemates giggled at the madness of it, but I wonder if they would still giggle if they knew just how far we can go and have gone and will go in the near future? We had the delight of bringing a tall dark mentalist on our trip down logic lane, singing of the wonders we met along the way but he added nothing but paraffin to the mix and it all went horribly wrong. We got on it, off it and giggled the weekend away.

We tumbled through oxford looking for the white spaces in art, and drinking grotesque cocktails in the QI, free wine in the turf and more fun things in the grand café… Eventually we ended back in my house where ailbhe and I licked eyeballs and dusty noses, drank pimms and got told off for dancing on Mathew langthorpes bed.

Finally we all lay in shambles in my little attic room, blowing bubbles and giggling. As we recover with coffee and sunshine Leroy relived his days working for O2 customer services, shouting in a gruff voice that he is batman, bats, batty to the core. We become an oxford gang with me as a mustached punisher, and mattie tells me he would be attracted to me if only I grew one for real. But eventually, as the sun grows dim and Leroy sees a sign shining in the sky and leaves us we are so sad we curl up on sofas and watch 'batman begins' giggling with glee.

Stranded in Charleroi

Curled up on the right hand side of our double bed a small blonde girl giggles gleefully as she reaches the line "I'm telling you stories. Trust me."

We missed our flight. We hopped from tram, to metro, to metro, to train, to bus, juggling luggage and dragging it wildly across roads, up stairs and into carraiges only to find on arrival that check in had closed and our seats had gone.

Michelle had panic printed across her face, bold font clashed against her rosy cheeks and ever enlarging blue eyes; she was goldilocks in grandmas house, gretel desperately searching for crumbs. Crumbs came in the form of a friendly Italian boy running late for his flight home; his shared predicament and reassuring smile calmed her down. The chivalry of the latin man slowed her pulse and she began to smile. His efforts, however, were soon dashed by a large Dub man with a wicked grin, who announced with glee "Well you're screwed anyway".

When we arrived at the airport we tore through crowds and skipped past the queue of people to ask a cold spagetti looking woman if there was any chance of getting on the plane- she looked at us with scorn and glee and retorted "but check in closed twenty minutes ago haw, haw, haw". Wishing her rabies and wrinkles we ran for the ticketing desk where they checked the computer telling us we were too late but we could get a flight in the morning.

Three years ago my passport was stolen in Italy and I was not allowed to get the train to switzerland to get a flight home. Instead I spent most of the night in a train station in Florence avoiding a horrible man with a toothless grin and the next in the airport in Rome trying to get a flight home. The airport was brightly lit and there was nowhere to sleep, I was offered an office by a security guard but the feminist in me objected to getting preferential treatment to the boys scattered around the floor. So I thanked him and assured him I was fine. But I was not fine, soon I was cold and the benches had arm rests slouched half way across them preventing people from using them as beds. They were large metal things that felt like they had been nailed to the floor. When my bones started to ache for sleep my inner feminist flew out the window and I opted for comfort and spent ten minutes dragging one metal bench across the floor to push against another to use as a bed. I would not curl up on the cold floor like the boys, I needed comfort.

But my efforts were in vain, the bench was hard and jagged, I was no warmer and got little sleep. This was the memory that came to me when we were told we could not fly out until the morning. My teeshirt was almost sticking to me, my hair was wild, my face glowed with perspiration and so I asked where the nearest cheap hotel could be found.

On entering the hotel room Michelle and I were greeted with the site of a large double bed with a tiny bed hanging above. Neither of us moved, Michelle looked at me and said "so we have to make a decision, does one of us sleep in the uncomfortable bed or do we share." This was not a new situation, in Tunisia Michelle had foolishly offered me the double bed thinking I would be polite enough to turn it down, but I was not polite and took the double. And she was not genuine, so after one night in the single she climbed in next to me, both of us opting to share rather than sleep in the corner.

After many jokes about molesting her in her sleep, and the brown substance on my wrist that I opted to put in my mouth being poo, I took out my poetry books and fell into other peoples dreams. Michelle was bookless so I gave her with my favourite novel, a signed copy of Jeanette Wintersens 'The Passion' that I got at the Dublin Writers festival when we ventured out to hear jeanette wintersen talk. I have never seen someone read with such glee, after each description a mischievous child grin spread against Michelles face and large eyes popped gleefully over the top of the book as she read out passages, eventually getting to that wonderful line and reading to me...

"I'm telling you stories, trust me"

Poetry with Eavan and Paula

It was to be an evening of poetry, with two amazingly powerful and talented women at the helm but when we arrived something else lurked beneath the water. Encouraged to sit on the floor we were informed that this was also to be a protest against banks doing what banks do. So we sat uncomfortably on the ground, drinking wine, shifting uncomfortably from side to side as Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan read poetry laced with a strange combination of power and delicacy. We travelled to the underworld as daughters trapped for half a year beneath the ground then evolved into a mother rescuing the child and making soul staining bargains. Eavan took us through the journey from childhood, to woman hood- she took us into our countries past to the famine roads.

I was in Belmullet, standing by the side of the road with my skirt tucked between my knees as the wind threatened to steal me away, or worse still expose bright pink underwear to the world, when ailbhe and I had an arguement about poetry. It had started on the bus but came to a head in a crevice between the two possible places we could grab food- Ailbhe questioned whether a certain poet we both love could ever win the big prizes or achieve something more because she was unsure if he had found the great idea yet. 'Every poet', she told me, 'needs a great idea in order to mark their place in history- Heaney has his bog people moulding themselves up from the earth, he has northern ireland'- this poet she thought, had not found his idea yet. I argued that his beauty was in seeing the extraordinary qualities in ordinary things, in integrating science and philosophy into his work, breaking down the world and it's inhabitants as a form of deconstruction--- if life is a formula he breaks it down into it's simplest form in order to better understand it.

'To explore the collection of poetry as a poem in itself is part of the great idea' ms darcy informed me- 'they need to have a unifying theme, something that links them all together, something unique- that they own, that they created'. I took this concept and went a slightly different direction but along a similiar vein- the collection of poetry as an object- what scene does it create- if you were to sit down and paint the book what would you put on the page. The poets last book would be one full of mirrors, and creaking doors- I can picture it in my head- the floors are dark, the varnish worn down- there are doors leading in every direction but you are sure that behind each one lurks a ghost- in the kitchen there is a chopping board and several sets of keys that seem to fit none of the doors.

Another writer described his big idea a lot more eloquently and the issue was resolved it was agreed unanimously that he is wonderful but I am getting off the topic. Eavan Boland to me is a woman with more than a big idea- it is the type of idea that sucks in people, they inhabit the idea. Her work contains fragments of Irish history, Myths, womens history--- it incorporates the struggles of northern ireland, the growth of women, and the oppression of women into this beautiful delicate world woven with history lessons and beautiful stories. Her world is a garden with invisible monsters lurking in the bushes and powerful women to protect and explain it all to us, to help us understand and move onwards- to prevent us fighting dead monsters for the rest of our lives or ones that never existed to begin with. Her garden is in reality- it is in history with children playing on the lawn and a mother sitting cross legged peeking over a book---the monsters have been pushed to the outskirts "I have chosen: out of myth into history".
And yet she uses Myth so wonderfully in her work to explain history, to explain her own feelings towards her children.

Paula Meehan took the stage after Eavan, reading passionately poems about moons hidden in canals, warning us not to let loved ones travel the canals as it may give them a taste for adventure and their next journey could be longer. She tells us this as her partner lurks in the audience brandishing a beard grown bushy from his travels. I had never really read Paulas work- she had come into the literary society before but I arrived late and was squashed down with the gigglers on the floor behind a desk- I didn't get to hear her poetry and took the black clad boy mutterings about silly womans poetry as gospel. Her poetry blew me away- it was beautiful and she performed it so well, it was an experience listening to her read. Afterwards I read some of her poetry stumbling upon a poem called "Child Burial" where a woman whose child dies wishes she could spin it back into her womb, to spin it back to that point where an act of love created it and avoid that act- to lose it as drops of blood never conceived. Haunting poetry that grabs and twists something in the gut.

After this dose of powerful petite female poets I was in another world- but we were soon snapped back to reality- to the protest I had invaded. Theo Dorgan addressed us all as friends who had come for the protest- I felt like an intruder stumbling into a liberation armies meeting- I had come for the poetry and that alone. Theo spoke passionally and with power about civil liberties, of banks like king Midas who turned himself to gold "the very breath inside him turned to gold". He told us as lovers of poetry we should protest and stir things us quoting michael hartnett 'Poets and prophets make no pact, the act of poetry is a rebel act'- of course Hartnett didn't write it for this particular circumstance but it still applied. He delivered words meant to whizz inside us and turn us into a frenzy- with a voice and a presence that made me think I should be angered, that we are being violated. He rallied against those banks and institutions that destroy our world ending with fighting words- 'no one remembers who owned the banks in 1916, no one remembers who owned the banks in america..... but we remember the banks and the poets, trust me, will have the last word".

It was poetry to watch- he fought for a good cause but still his passion, ability to comand words and hold the stage reminded me of some of histories propogandaists leading men to their death- bringing us towards that unavoidable battle. We would fight those banks tooth and nail- if we lived a hundred years ago- but today we accept that you can not fight something that doesn't exist- you need capital to fight invisible money machines and as poets, we lack the resources. It would be wonderful to change the banks minds but all we can do is sit and listen to the poetry of propoganda- to the description of gold taking over midas, of the air tightening. As I sat their I imagined drinking hot gold and turning my own lungs to gold- I sat there wishing I could explore the idea of how long one could live. I loved Theos talk- he is a powerful man in a way that so few people are powerful- he has a great mind that could be a dangerous weapon if he didn't have the morals to command it or such a passionate love for the arts. But place him in another world a world in which the hugh lane gallery is closing, anglo irish writing is threatened, riots in the abbey theatre and question would he rally up the troops or be content to rave poetically to happy listeners?

Sorry I go on
.