In his writing, Louis de Paor is looking for specific life changing moments to write about. Moments like a birth or a death and even things that are not quite as momentous, but nevertheless significant in some way. He wants to capture that moment when he or somebody else is straddling two distinct times–the time before the event, and the time after the event. It’s an illustration of how everything changes and yet you go on. You celebrate. You cope. You do whatever is appropriate for the event at hand. People are naturally intrigued with how events affect other people. It’s our commonality that pulls us together. It’s the truth of that moment that makes poetry and stories come alive and resonate with our readers.
The reason why this appeals to me is that in my art and writing I also like to explore these in-between places. Things that are recurrent in my photography are windows, doorways, pathways and the undersea world. I’m intrigued by other worlds, other cultures, and the points of entry into those places, the places of intersection. I realized after de Paor’s presentation that a lot of my writing is about these life-changing moments as well and now that I know this, it will be easier to focus on things and bring them to light. It might help me focus on the part of the story that would be important and interesting to my reader because it helps answer the univeral question that all writers face of the “So what?”
In “The Phone Call,” de Paor writes “Until the phone started ringing//it was just a January afternoon.” At first read, it sounds ominous, but I’m not sure of the imagery he has used, so I’m not entirely sure what to think of it. It sounds like this other person gave him bad news, though, since the words were “all elbows and knees//boxing shadows in my head.” As a non-native of Ireland and therefore unable to decipher the imagery effectively, I feel like the phone call delivers some sort of bad news like a break-up, a death, or loss of a job, and so this clearly falls in line with an in-between place where after the phone call, nothing is the same anymore.
I like the way de Paor creates unique imagery to portray his feelings. In “On Being Left,” he doesn’t say that he’s sad when someone leaves, instead “When you’re not here//milk turns sour in the fridge, the toaster burns the last piece//of bread deliberately,//the phone is struck dumb,//and the postman dies//on his way to the house.” And even better, “I hug your scent from cold sheets.” That is such a more poignant and powerful image after the playful lines above.
Overall, however, the poem is playful and a little silly. It makes us laugh and yet we feel his loneliness in the absence of this woman. This isn’t an ominous life-changing event unless her absence was caused by death or break-up. I think, instead, it is meant to portray how her absence makes his heart grow surprisingly fonder of her in all the little ways that we miss the other person when they’re not there, and how his life becomes so out of kilter without her. If It weren’t so playful, I might entertain the more dire meanings of being left.
In “Telling Tales,” de Paor has a fresh way of describing his daughter’s fear of the dark and how powerless he is in convincing her otherwise. “She keeps her thumb//pressed tight//in the leaking dam//of her mouth,//terrified the sandbanks will break//and all the waters//of the world//lose over her drowning head.” I’ve never seen a child sucking its thumb described in quite that way and yet it’s brilliant and resonates with all of us. This is a stage that almost all children go through universally, and something that all parents have to navigate through with them.
He describes every parent’s helpless frustration in trying to help his daughter with her fear in these lines: “She doesn’t credit//a blessed thing I say, not one word//of the white lies//great minds invented//to lull gullible children//when the light//begins to fail.” How one copes with their fears as children can shape how they cope with fears for the rest of their lives. We want to naturally protect our children from the anguish of this rite of passage, or at the very least, help them pass through it effectively.
I myself remember digging out my son Stephen’s Tiger Bright flashlight that roared and letting him know that he was there to protect him from anything in the dark and if he was scared, that all he had to do was press the light on. The first few nights, I had to go in and turn the Tiger Bright off after he want to sleep. After that, he never needed it again. We didn’t have to go through this with my younger son, Carsten, because he would just keep crawling into Stephen’s bed. Now that he’s older, I find that Stephen likes me to solve his problems and Carsten will usually solve them himself. It’s funny how these things work out and can explain why our children’s personalities are so different!
In de Paor’s even more playful side, I love the way he describes hanging out his woman’s dainty things and how it affects him in “Shocked.” He describes the stockings being inside out and how he is shocked when he goes to turn them right-side in. “I could have sworn//that every inch//of my sorry bones//had left this solid earth//as each and every hair,//from the back of my hands//to the back of my neck, stood up//when the surge hit the wall inside my skull,//……..till my hand burned//with the celibate shock of it.” One gets the feeling that while he might have been initially slightly annoyed at her for taking them off hastily and leaving the stockings inside out in the wash, that the act of turning her silky undergarments the right way in her absence shocked him in a not altogether unpleasant way.
I have to laugh out loud at de Paor’s “Love Poem.” A lot of poets have very unconventional love poems to their credit, but I’ve never heard any describe the aftermath of a fight quite like de Paor does. “I feel clean//as a constipated monk//after a glorious shit. So//unburdened. So serene.//Fuck the neighbours.//We may never stop fighting.” At a point where most people might feel contrite after a fight and try to figure out how to mend fences, de Paor feels downright celebratory. This is something totally unexpected and even somewhat endearing.
And of course he redeems himself in “The Fruit Market.” He says, “She hangs a constellation//of fresh fruits//on the bare branches of the sky,//like magic lanterns shining//on your ripening body//that makes my teeth water://the taste of pears and perfect apples.” He reveals a tender moment between him and his woman, a time when they are undressing at the end of the day and the feelings this can invoke. It is a nice contrast to the previous poem about their fighting.
I am struck by de Paor’s and other writer’s extreme pride in their Irish culture and heritage and how it comes through in their writings. In “Old Stories,” it reads like a tribute to his mother or other maternal figure in his life. The lines I love the most are: “She set fuchsia and ragwort//on the concrete and tar//of my talk, and you could hear//the unrevised history of her people//in my blood-spatter voice in the schoolyard//” I can picture how she would fill her son with stories of his heritage, and yet try to curb his young spirit a bit. Boys tend to talk very rough when they’re young and sometimes need a mother’s softening influence.
de Paor also creates other lovely tributes. In “The Bedroom,” he describes entering his mother’s room as an adult after she’s gone, but going back in time as if he was a child again. I’m struck by the lines: “When we opened that door,//we found bright corridors//we never dreamed of in our house;//we walked through airy rooms//they had abandoned long ago//when we brought our tiny troubles//in muddy shoes through the white halls//of their innocent and endless dreams.” It is probably a time of cleaning out a loved one’s belongings after they’ve passed away and all of the emotion that it can invoke. It shows an understanding of how we all start out with dreams and how much we sacrifice those dreams for our children. It’s a very touching poem because most good parents inadvertently wind up doing this, though it’s not something they usually plan on.
In “Dead House,” de Paor describes what it’s like to clean and clear out a house after someone has passed away. “We swept and scrubbed and scraped//the last dust from the house//with Vim and Holy Water.//…….We left the house powerless,//clean as a corpse//without a ghost.” Anyone who has done this for a grandparent, parent or other relative that has passed away can really feel the imagery ring true. And this is, again, how he shows people coping after a major life event, the death of a loved one.
There is another lovely tribute, but this time to his grandfather. In “Rituals,” de Paor describes him “with a twist of his hand,//that didn’t flinch from the business//of castrating bull calves//or drowning unwanted pups in the sheep dip,//a hand that could calm a frightened colt//or a contrary child,//with gentle sorcery,//he’d ease the top off the bottle.” He goes on to describe his grandgfather’s ritualistic release at the end of the day, after a long day of taking care of whatever needed doing. It shows his rough, tough-as-nails side and his gentle, nurturing side. He also goes on to describe how he doesn’t possess any of this talent as he drinks a porter with the ghost of his grandfather.
While studying abroad at the National University of Ireland at Galway (N.U.I.G.), the program introduced us to many Irish writers. Louis de Paor was definitely one of my favorites. He was very approachable and interesting and gave me a way to focus my work by concentrating on the moments of change, the in-between spaces of time, and how that affects people. I love the way he draws on his family’s Irish heritage, giving tribute to folklore and superstition, and showing how he navigates the world as Louis de Paor. We are privileged to have entry into portions of his inner sanctum, a place where we can be greeted by very surprising revelations or lovely tributes, depending on the time we enter it. His insight and guidance has affected my writing immeasurably in so many different ways.
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Catherine Hotaling-Donnelly earned her B.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville after studying abroad in the now defunct Writers in Galway Program at NUIG. Cat, as her friends call her, has published poems and/or fiction in magazines and journals including @Urban Magazine and The Lamplighter Review, and is currently working on a poetry manuscript and a play. She has also published numerous articles and columns in several local newspapers, including The Northwest Arkansas Times. Cat is adjusting to city life again in Fayetteville, Arkansas with her husband, cat and old pug.
Photo credit: Terri Malone
