Former Lord Mayor of Dublin, Dermot Lacey, To Speak At Inaugural Conference On Why The Poetry Of Kevin Higgins Is Crap

 

Labour Party Councillor for Dublin City Council's Pembroke Ward, Dermot Lacey (pictured left) is a fanatical moderate of the Social Democratic centre who makes sure that things that were going to happen anyway get done and dusted in the driest possible way. Without people like Dermot Lacey the world would remain exactly as it is. 

I have no idea who the gobdaw beside him with the placard is. But said carrier will no doubt be appointed Junior Minister for Turf and Tourism in the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil-Labour-Sinn Féin-Finian McGrath-Michael Lowry coalition of 2025, before being fed to crocodiles in the election after that. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, so it generally goes. 

Yesterday Dermot Lacey had what, for a fanatical moderate of the Social Democratic centre, must qualify as a pretty thrilling day. Following the vote on the Abhortion Bill, Dermot leapt onto Farcebook with what, for a Social Democratic centrist, can only be called enthusiasm. Dermot, with his usual fanatacism, took issue with the six pro-choice T.Ds who voted against the bill because of what they believe to be its draconian restrictiveness and its undeniable criminalisation of women who obtain abortions outside the terms laid out in the bill. In a stunning rhetorical flourish Dermot had these devastating words for Clare Daly, Joan Collins, Mick Wallace, Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Luke 'Ming' Flanagan: 

"Sure they only know what they're against."

Lacey is well known as perhaps the Irish Labour Party's greatest polemicist. It is rumoured that Labour Chief Whip Emmett Stagg gets to sleep every night by endlessly re-reading Dermot Lacey's Facebook updates.

When I first heard that the six T.Ds were to vote against the bill, I wasn't sure that it was the right thing to do. There are certainly those on the sad Left who are congenitally incapable of saying yes. However, doing so  made it possible for them to raise the issues which the bill doesn't deal with in a way that would not have been possible had they voted for it. Their statements make a lot of sense.

Clare Daly said:

“In the absence of a referendum to repeal Art 40.3.3 of the Constitution – for which we call – we were willing to support legislation in line with the X Case Ruling of 1992. This Bill however, will put more obstacles in the way of access to life-saving abortions than are required by the Constitution.

This legislation is happening in the wake of the sad death of Savita Halappanavar. Yet the Fine Gael – Labour Bill, by defining and giving legal protection to ‘unborn human life’ from the moment of implantation until delivery, will not prevent similar deaths. It will make terminations illegal during an inevitable miscarriage while there is still a foetal heartbeat. If a woman gets an infection in such circumstances, doctors will have to delay a termination until her life is at risk. This was what happened to Savita Halappanavar – and the same could happen again under this Bill.”

Richard BoydBarrett said:

“Defining the ‘unborn’ in this way – for the first time in Irish law and unique in Europe – also excludes fatal foetal abnormality as grounds for abortion. This will force women whose pregnancies will inevitably end in tragedy to go full term or travel overseas for terminations.

Yet none of this is required by the X Ruling or the Constitution. It is a pandering to those who oppose abortion on any grounds – and who are prepared to see women die rather than allow life-saving terminations. It is particularly galling that Labour are promoting this as a Bill that will protect women’s lives, when it will do nothing of the kind. It is doubly ironic that they are supporting this reactionary Bill having opposed the Daly Bill on grounds that it was not sufficiently radical.”

Joan Collins said:

“Abortion will remain a criminal offense under this Bill, with the threat of a 14 year sentence for women and their doctors – including women who use abortion pills. Combined with the new requirement on doctors and hospitals to justify their decisions for terminating a pregnancy, this will put pressure on doctors to delay terminations until there can be no dispute that a woman’s life is at risk – by which time it may be too late.”

Mick Wallace said:

“For women who are so desperate that they would consider suicide rather than continue an unwanted pregnancy, the Bill will compel them to an examination and assessment by at least three practitioners and possibly six. This includes an obstetrician – who has no training in assessment of suicide risk. The government’s own Expert Group Report said a maximum of two doctors was enough. Yet Fine Gael and Labour are putting obstacles in the way of despairing women, forcing overseas those who are able to travel, in order to placate the anti-abortionists in their midst and the anti-abortion minority in Irish society.”

Luke Flanagan said:

“The government says the Bill brings clarity for women and doctors. But that ‘clarity’ spells out that  a woman’s life must be at risk before a doctor can intervene to terminate a pregnancy even where the demise of the foetus is inevitable. The perverse requirement in 40.3.3 that a doctor must allow a medical condition that is not in itself life-threatening – such as inevitable miscarriage – become potentially lethal before they can perform a termination, is unnecessarily retained in this Bill.”

Joe Higgins said:

“The Bill makes no provision for abortion to protect a woman’s health, or for cases of rape and incest, or where a woman regards it as being in her best interest to end a pregnancy. We will be calling for the repeal of this Act, and for the repeal of Art 40.3.3 of the Constitution to provide for the needs of women in Ireland for abortion services to be available close to their homes.”

I've not much doubt that, as Ireland's abhortion laws continue to be modernised under pressure from reality, these six T.Ds will be on the correct side of the argument every step along the way. The same cannot be said of Dermot Lacey, because 99.99% of the time Dermot does whatever the Labour Party leadership tell him to. 

He did once bravely defy the Labour Party leadership when, in 2003, he voted in favour of increasing domestic waste charges on Dublin City Council. At the time Dermot was Lord Mayor of Dublin which will, we can be sure, be mentioned in orations at his funeral as the high point of his existence. Since I first clapped eyes on him at the January 1983 Labour Youth conference at Liberty Hall, Dermot Lacey has been saying a dull but, for him, orgasmic yes to the Labour Party leadership. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition of 1982-87, the government which shambolically allowed the legislation facilitating the 1983 anti-abhortion ammendment to pass through the Dáil

This being the case, I felt obliged to reply to Councillor Lacey's gibe. I said that this comment was a bit rich coming from someone who had spent most of his life being a bag carrier for Ruari Quinn. 

 

I may have used slightly more colourful language than that. And I may have implied that the bags Lacey carried for Ho Chi in fact contained Quinn's testes. But the point stands. Dermot Lacey shot back that my post, on Facebook, was "ignorant", which is fair enough - the phrasing was rough - he went on though to type the immortal words:

"and your "poems" are crap too."

By combining political opinion and literary criticism in this inciteful way, the former Lord Mayor of Dublin is joining such giants as Socialist Pary MEP, Paul Murphy, and Galway Socialist Workers Party.

For Paul Murphy's contribution to avant-garde literary criticism see here
http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/2013/01/paul-murphy-takes-up-literary-criticism.html

For Galway Socialist Workers Party's take on the poetry of the revisionist dog Kevin Higgins

http://hurryupharry.org/2008/07/22/the-socialist-workers-party-turns-poetry-critic/

August will see the first Political Conference On Why The Poetry Of Kevin Higgins Is Crap. It will take place at a disused funeral parlour somewhere in the Midlands. Keynote speakers confirmed to date include Dette McLoughlin of Galway Socialist Workers Party, Paul Murphy MEP, Niall Farrell of Galway Alliance Against War and Councillor Dermot Lacey. God rest their souls.

Those attending the conference can buy copies of my books here http://www.salmonpoetry.com/bookshop-search.php 

The Constant Markievicz Conspiracy

 

On Thursday evening Tom D'Arcy of Direct Democracy Ireland appeared to make a bit of a gom of himself on the Nine O'Clock News. He revealed to a startled nation that Constant Markievicz was, contrary to popular belief, a man and didn't die in 1927 but was shot by the British on St. Stephen's Green on some unspecified date, which may or may not have been 1916. 

My poem Alternative History: Constance Markievicz Gets A Sex Change is published on Irish Left Review http://www.irishleftreview.org/2013/07/08/alternative-history-constance-markievicz-sex-change/

Rhona McCord, who works in a certain insitution on Dublin's Kildare Street, suggested that Tom D'Arcy's revised version of Irish History might be the subject of a poem. So, the poem is dedicated to Rhona. A person of the same surname, a James McCord, was one of the the Watergate burglers. The connections are obvious. David Icke, Jim Corr and members of Direct Democracy Ireland will draw their own conclusions...

Constant is picture below (before the sex change operation) when he was still a she and went by the name of Constance.

Congratulations to Adam White and Doire Press; if it wasn't so early I'd have a glass of brandy

I first saw Adam White read his poetry at North Beach Poetry Nights in the Crane Bar.

Later he was a Featured Reader at the May 2012 Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library. http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.ie/2012/05/new-writer-of-year-eimear-ryan-for-may.html

Last month, I reviewed Adam's debut poetry collection Accurate Measurements for the June Biblio book review page in The Galway Advertiser, alongside Leanne O'Sullivan's The Mining Road:

'Accurate Measurements is Adam White’s debut collection and is published by Doire Press. It confirms what those familiar with White’s work have known for some time - he is an absolute original.

Though he rose up via the performance poetry route, he has never been given to roaring at microphones or removing items of clothing to enhance his metaphors. His work as a carpenter greatly influences his approach to poetry.
The title poem opens thus: “No one ever got the hanging of a door right/first time round. That’s what makes it beautiful/to go back to time and again.”
The poem ends on a tenderly satirical note: “Some carpenters/hang their best door in a bathroom, others shine/in toilets, mindful of all those who will sit there/later, relieving themselves, taking it all in.”
Each of these poems has clearly been gone back to time and again. In ‘Graduand’, ‘Strike!’, ‘Estwing’ and ‘Chainsaw’ he writes with a rare absence of cynicism about his work, which he clearly loves and not merely because it sometimes puts bread on his plate.
The master finish poem of the collection though, for me, is the quietly hilarious ‘Her and that Wardrobe’: “At first glance that wardrobe was good for firewood.”
The carpenter’s skill and persistence rescues said wardrobe from the terminal ward and he imagines “Her Saturday readying herself in/its glass”.
He knows of course that even the best patch up job does not last forever and, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’ll be back:
“The drawer always slightly open,/the flash and frill of unmentionables.//And won’t you return here in a year/to see the ass fallen from another drawer.'  http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/61495/safe-houses-and-wardrobe-doors  

Accurate Measurements is published by my good friends John Walsh and Lisa Frank of Doire Press. http://www.doirepress.com/HOME.html

In today's Guardian, the Forward Prize shortlist for this year has been announced: The shortlist for the £5,000 best first collection prize includes Dan O'Brien's War Reporter, inspired by interviews he conducted with a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Also in the running are collections published by two tiny presses – Adam White's Accurate Measurements is published by Doire Press in Connemara, while Steve Ely's collection, Oswald's Book of Hours, is published by Smokestack Press in Middlesborough. They are pitted against three of the biggest publishers in UK poetry: Faber & Faber for Emily Berry's Dear Boy – a wittily disturbing soliloquy; Bloodaxe Books for Hannah Lowe's Chick; and Seren Books for She Inserts the Key, a collection that juxtaposes sparrowhawks and the Bank of England, crafted by former City solicitor Marianne Burton.

The chair of judges, Jeanette Winterson, hailed a "powerful year for poetry".

For more see today’s Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/08/forward-poetry-prize-shortlists-2013

Huge and heartfelt congratulations to Adam and John and Lisa. If it wasn't so early, I'd have a glass of brandy.

Where Edward Snowden Went Wrong

In the Dáil recently my friend Clare Daly called on the Irish government to give political asylum to American National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden.

I absolutely agree. Indeed, we have a vacant appartment upstairs for which the usual rent is €150 per week; I'd be happy be rent it to young Edward for the bargain price of, say, €130. I understand that his girlfriend. Lindsay (possibly now his ex-girlfriend?) is a pole dancer. Now, while I wouldn't approve of that sort of carry on myself, how people earn their living is not my business. As long as the rent gets paid. Lindsay (pictured below) seems like a nice young lady and would be welcome to join him here. If they are cat people, which I'd guess they probably are, then we may ask them to help us out by feeding our cat Ziggy when are away doing poetry readings.

There is a double bed and a spare room with a single bed. The only thing we'd ask is that they don't make too much noise nor bring around any of that shower from Galway Alliance Against War. This is a quiet neighbourhood and we have certain standards, although not too many. Edward Snowden can give me a call any time on 087-6431748, if he wants to have a chat about the appartment. I look forward to all of my future phone calls now being monitored by the National Security Agency; it's important work they do and vital to protect us from the threat posed by the international terrorist movement my late mother used to describe as yer man in Afghanistan with the beard.

Intelligence agencies have a traditional solution when it comes to dealing with agents who depart the fold: they smother them in hotel bedrooms or spike them in the leg with risin tipped brollies. In 1938, when American KGB agent (and founding member of the U.S. Communist Party) Juliet Poyntz decided that Stalin was, after all, a murdering psychopath rather than the saviour of the international working class, she disappeared and Stalinist collaborating 'progressives' such as Lillian Helman and Pete Seeger worked hard to forget her name. From sea to shining sea, readers of The Nation could, if you listened very carefully, be heard whispering: what's a dead ex-comrade or two when what's at stake is the glorious October Revolution. I have a poem dedicated to Juliet Poyntz published here
^{http://neoneocon.com/2012/06/18/juliet-poynz-changer/}

As I say, I entirely sypathise with the predicament in which Edward Snowden finds himself. It is not a surprise that intelligence agencies would be involved in gathering information on innocent millions of people in the sinister way we now, thanks to Edward Snowden, know for sure the National Security Agency are. Some silly people who believe in things like Jimmy Carter, the United Nations and the speeches of Michael D. Higgins have been shocked by what has been revealed. These poor souls should be given all the help our best psychiatrists can offer.

Back on planet Earth, the one criticism I would have of young Snowden is that he entirely mishandled his application for political asylum in Ireland. He asked us directly for asylum. He should have been advised that you never ask an Irish person a direct question. It would have been far better for him to take the Cascarino approach, which was referred to by Clare Daly in the Dáil:
“I seem to remember that it was deemed sufficiently important to get an Irish passport for Tony Cascarino on the grounds of a fictitious grandmother so he could be part of Jackie’s Army.”

According to the Gospel that is Wikipedia, it was actually Cascarino's grandfather who was, if not exactly fictitious, certainly not at all Irish:

"Cascarino was born in England but represented the Republic of Ireland, qualifying through his Irish grandfather. However, he later revealed that his mother told him in 1996 that she was adopted and therefore no blood relative to the grandfather. Cascarino said in his autobiography: "I didn't qualify for Ireland. I was a fraud. A fake Irishman". The adoption of his mother gained her the right to Irish citizenship and he was eligble." 

What Edward Snowden needs to do is get signed as a centre forward for Millwall. Then his problems will be, if not over, then certainly very different. He just needs to learn to think outside what Johnny Giles (pictured below) would call the box.

Poem In The Manner of The Late Kevin Higgins: What is most striking is his immense self-regard

My 'Poem In The Manner of The Late Kevin Higgins' is just published in the special Irish issue of the Portland, Oregon based online literary magazine Penduline, which is edited by Dave Lordan with the following epigram from a 'Member of the Socialist Party whose name no one remembers':

“What is most striking is his [Kevin Higgins's] immense self-regard.”

You can read the poem in full here

http://www.pendulinepress.com/author-article-archives/hopperville-poem-in-the-manner-of-the-late-kevin-higgins/

The issue also includes ‘Standing on the Couch: the Over the Edge Readings Series Turns Ten' an essay by Susan Millar DuMars plus fine new writing by a range of rising Irish writers.

Conference of Religious of Ireland express concern for the anuses of Colm Keaveney & Michelle Mulherin

On its website The Conference of Religious of Ireland describes itself as “an Organisation of friars, sisters and brothers from across Ireland, with history, structures, activities, publications and commissions on various topics.” The Conference of Religious of Ireland (C.O.R.I) is best known for expressing concern about poverty through the earthly vessel that is Father Sean Healy. You can read more about C.O.R.I. on their website http://www.cori.ie/ . They’re a right rowdy crowd.

Unfortunately, this weekend C.O.R.I. have gone beyond their usual ineffectual expressions of anguish about the growing gap between rich and poor and issued a statement in which they accuse the government of Enda Kenny & Eamon Gilmore of behaving like a "totalitarian regime" by not allowing backbench Fine Gael and Labour T.Ds a free vote on the government’s upcoming abhortion legislation aka the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill. For more such obscurantist ramblings you can read the full C.O.R.I statement here  http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0607/455123-abortion-legislation/

There have been a number of totalitarian regimes throughout history. Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot come to mind. But I’m bored talking about that crowd.

Another totalitarian regime was the one which ruled much of Europe during the Dark and Middle ages: the Catholic Church.

Here’s an example of the type of thing the organisation, of which C.O.R.I. is part, got up to then:

“While the accused heretics were on strappado or the rack, inquisitors often applied other torture devices to their bodies. These included­ heated metal pincers, thumbscrews, boots, or other devices designed to burn, pinch or otherwise mutilate their hands, feet or bodily orifices. Although mutilation was technically forbidden, in 1256, Pope Alexander IV decreed that inquisitors could clear each other from any wrongdoing that they might have done during torture sessions.”

Good old Pope Alexander IV. As Popes go, he’s one of my favourites. The above mentioned application of pincers and thumbscrews to the soft bits took place in Spain. I’m told the Museum of the Inquisition in Seville is well worth a visit.

This is the sort of thing totalitarian regimes get up to. Whatever one might say about the current coalition, they are no such regime. Fine Gael and Labour T.D.s, such as Blessed Colm Keaveney and Michelle Mulherin, who vote against the government’s abhortion legislation, will not have hot metal pincers inserted up their anuses. They will lose the government whip for a while and be expelled from the parliamentary party. They will though remain T.Ds until at least the next General Election. The assorted friars, sisters and brothers of the Conference of Religious of Ireland should rest easy in their beds; the anuses of Colm Keaveney and Michelle Mulherin (pictured below with some of her enthusiastic supporters) are safe in Enda’s and Eamon’s hands. Pope Alexander IV would not approve: his heretics did not live to be thrown about by their supporters come the result of the final count in the subsequent general election.

Featured Poet Today On Vallum Poetry Magazine Blog, Montreal

Just found out I'm the featured poet today on the blog of Vallum contemporary poetry magazine, which is based in Leonard Cohen's home town of Montreal. 

The title of the poem is 'Betrayals' and it originally appeared in the print version of Vallum back in 2007.

A lot has changed since. But, to quote Louis MacNiece, once in another world,  I wrote this:  http://vallummag.blogspot.ca/2013/06/featured-poet-kevin-higgins.html?spref=fb