Madrid and Other Poems

By John Liddy

Madrid and Other Poems has a threefold annunciation - Praise, Tort, and Vista. The sections reflect these words: Praise is filled with gratitude and thanks to people who are gone while it mourns those who have been loved and lost. Tort speaks out against issues of the modern day, and the outrage and chaos that is within and outside of the poet. In Vista he reflects on life’s experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: Mar 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995733398

John Liddy

John Liddy was born in Co. Cork 1954. He grew up in Limerick and took a degree with The University of Wales. He worked for many years as a teacher/librarian. Founding editor with Jim Burke of The Stony Thursday Book, he has published ten collections of poetry in English, three with Spanish translations, as well as books for children. His own translations include the work of Irish and Spanish poets. He was Limerick City of Culture Poet in Residence for July 2014 and co-edited 1916-2016: An Anthology of Reactions. A collection of all his Spanish related poems is forthcoming in 2018. He lives in Madrid and summers in Ireland.

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PREFACE

With the publication of his first collection, Boundaries (1974), John Liddy emerged as one of Limerick’s, and Ireland’s, most promising younger poets. The book, published by his mentor Nora McNamara, with the title Boundaries foreshadows many of the themes that Liddy still concerns himself with to this day. The title itself is intriguing in that the cover depicts the word ‘Boundaries’ divided by a horizontal line, making two words ‘bound’ and ‘aries’ . Liddy was born on the 11th of April 1954, under the Astrological sign of Aries and as he said ‘As for Boundaries. I designed the cover of the book by splitting the word in two as I felt bound or confined by the world around me and was eager to explore further afield’. The book then is not only a living embodiment of the poet himself but the themes of boundaries, borders and crossing overs has become a major aspect of his work.

In his introduction to Liddy’s eight collection Gleanings (Revival Press, 2010), Waterford born poet Thomas McCarthy says ‘the birthplace maybe Cork but the soul of this poet is a Limerick soul, Limerick bred, coddled and exiled’. He lives in Madrid and may be exiled but John Liddy takes a positive view of this exile, indeed he transforms his exile by making where he lives home, as in the poem ‘A Tea Towel’

For when we would look

out the high window

to allow thought roam,

contemplate a tea-towel

waving both of us home.

The poet is never really in exile he lives with this binary European existence between Ireland and Spain, indeed he deconstructs it and makes something new and welcoming out of what could easily become an emotional no-mans land, trapped between borders. It is the crossing of these borders that has added to the vitality of his poetry. Poems are set in either in Spain or Ireland but every poem harkens back to either Ireland or Europe. He has been quoted as saying that he has

the best of two worlds and I continue to be stimulated by those two countries in question. Part of me belongs to the mythical, childlike, brutal-historical, young man’s world of Ireland and the other part to a more European, contemporary, adult world of Spain, a country I have grown to love, particularly its people. I believe my poems reflect the experiences of the two countries and how I react to them.

www.europeanairish.com, (2010)

In another recent interview for the documentary The Secret Heart of Things he says

‘I don’t actually see myself as now being in exile but I am aware of what it means to be living outside on a daily basis, outside of Ireland. I touch on this theme of separation, is the word I would use which would be O’Grady’s word also; separation rather than exile. There is a separation involved but through that separation one can grow very, you can grow strong, you can be a stronger person. You’re confronting yourself in an alien place and you’re discovering things about yourself and I think that’s what I discovered within myself,’

The Secret Heart of Things, (2014).

Again from Gleanings his poem ‘Fonsie and Beni’ deals with a local Limerick newspaper vendor, Fonsie Renihan, who was also an opera aficionado. Here we go from pure Limerick to the grandeur of European opera with Beniamino Gigli. In this poem Liddy reminds us that Limerick indeed had fame as a city renowned for its love of music, especially opera. But this is more than a memory poem; we are also giving access to a mysterious sense of comradeship between a humble newspaper seller and a star of European opera. When thanked by Fonsie for the complimentary ticket received from Gigli, he replies:

No, no Gigli protested,

"Thank you most sincerely

for allowing me to see."

The poet never tells us what exactly Gigli ‘saw’ but the aporia becomes meaningful when he invites us to contemplate the words of Montaigne ‘because it was him; because it was me’. Here we witness what the Spanish call ‘Duende’ and what we might call ‘Soul’ a recognition of the basic oneness that exists between every man, woman and child, whatever their station in life; peasant or aristocrat. Indeed Liddy has always recognised the nobility of human existence. In a 2009 column for the website www.limerick.com, called ‘Musings 3…A Passing’ he writes about his time as a barman in Collins Oyster Bar in Limerick.

At different angles through the mirrors one could keep an eye on