INTRODUCTION

These uncollected poems were written between 2002 and 2023 and are mostly unpublished.

Augustus Young was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1943, is a poet, playwright and prose writer, publishing over twenty books. He has an entry in the Oxford Companion of Irish Literature and has been widely anthologised. His most recent publication is The Making of a Pure Poet (May 2023, Ashgrove Publishing London). ‘What Is My Nation?’ is an extract.

His regular webzine is www.augustusyoung.com. 

SUBPOEMA: ‘What Is My Nation?’

Denis Donoghue, the literary critic, stated, ‘With a poem it’s not whether you agree with it or not, but if you are willing to read it and let it, provisionally at least, read you. The opinionated self must not take over the experiencing self.’

‘Empty vessels make the most noise,’ my mother growled, improving on Shakespeare’s last two words ‘loudest sound’ (Henry V), when I rattled the bars of my childhood in protest at something I disapproved of. Often because it seemed to me self-evident and bored me to hear it spelled out (I was bad at spelling). Now the vessel I possessed was making a profane whisper, a noise in my head that hissed what my father would think. The descendants of Cockney Black and Tans he fought mocked my accent when I asked for a box of matches in a newspaper shop, repeating my request for ‘bauks and ashes’ back with a leer, ameliorated by a ‘Roy, meat’ as they gave me the right change. I secretly admire the creative argot of Cockney slang, but ‘Roy, meat’ isn’t quite right for ‘Right, mate’. 

My early ambitions towards poetry had reduced themselves to light verse in Irish English. Gaelic, my other language, was all but dead, so it only counted for translations from it wasn’t. The reason for my native English was plain enough to me when in the Lamb and Flag talking to my friend Tony. ‘I have not lost my Irish accent. Not in itself a failure. It is a secret weapon, and, indeed, a matter of pride. Coevals from Ireland who change the way they speak are either cowards (fear of being different) or knaves (like the Churchill’s Brendan Bracken).’ Nor had I lost my Gaelic accent in metrical matters. Austin Clarke had been my father’s poetry teacher, and I had inherited his ideas on the influence of Gaelic on Irish English poems.

Meter, the heartbeat of poetry in English, can be irregular. The syncopation of syllabics – the baseline of Bardic prosody – does not obviate a healthy blood flow. But rhyme is its essential topping and tailing. And it cannot be true if you don’t have the received pronunciation. The BBC has standardized it. Congel O’Curry, my college mentor, it sounded as though a silver spoon was held over the nostrils. As I didn’t want to write poetry for the people of Cork City only (I had tried and, though a native, it seemed my accent was too Southside posh), the choice was between talking to the nation with a funny voice or giving up. I kept my accent.  

Three decades later, when I left London to live in France and my accent no longer mattered, I changed my mind. Shakespeare’s sonnets had been my father’s model of what poetry in vernacular English should be. Scholars in Sussex University had been examining his rhymes to ‘divine’ how he spoke. Joab Comfort on a visit brought me a recording, and to my ears Shakespeare spoke with a pronounced brogue. I mimicked it with the dialogue of his Irish characters in Henry V and demonstrated to a skeptical Joab that the Bard of Avon had given them a Cork accent. Chug-lipped abrupt. ‘Brush up your Shakespeare. Start quoting him now,’ I said (Kiss Me Kate).

Try it out yourself on Captain McMorris, for instance (Henry V, Act 4, scene 3). And Joab, though a Protestant from Sligo, recited ‘The work ish give over’ and ‘Throats to be cut and work to be done’ in ‘dis and dat’ Cork accident. We alternated between ‘What is my nation? Villain, bastard, knave, rascal. Who talks about it?’ and ‘I do not know you so well a man as good as myself. So, Christ save me. I will cut your head off.’ Spoken like a true Cork man, Joab agreed, and he suggested I test-speak the Frenchmen in Henry V. It proved less conclusive.

For instance, ‘A cette heure de couper votre gorge.’ The Boy in Henry translates Pistol’s intentions to M. Fer, the French prisoner in irons. ‘Owy cuppele gorge’. Pistol repeats the words, ramming them down M. Fer’s throat. He gets the ‘gorge’ right. A citizen of ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ (GB Shaw, in his stage-Irishness) would know that ‘Soft words butter no parsnips’. And it costs M. Fer two hundred crowns to save his bacon, or lard as The Boy interpreted, speaking with ‘the accent of a gentleman rather than a froggy Frenchman (as the stage-Englishman Harold Macmillan put it). But since I knew nothing about French accents, and my knowledge of the language was not nearly good enough to negotiate a pot de vin (er, a bribe), let alone compose poetry, I told Joab Comfort, I’m barking up the wrong tree. And he said ‘barking?’ and I think I know what he meant. So, I started secretly writing poetry again, in the brogue of Elizabethan actor-playwrights, which was my own (Cork is closer to Wales and therefore Stratford-on-Avon). It was for me alone. That is, unless Second Generation Irish become the majority, the English public will, I think, must wait to read them till the cows come home, and you know what happens to cows in England. With foot and mouth disease!   

Shakespeare, four centuries before, listened to the rump of Shane (The Proud) O’Neill’s disintegrating train of entertainers. Elizabeth had detained Shane O’Neill in London beyond his resources (English diplomacy at its usual game) and the Stage Irishman was invented. Shane ended up in Gaelic grief, eating Gloriana’s dust as though it was gold while his bards went a-begging in the streets. Shakespeare has Pistol misquote one of their songs, ‘Cailin o Chois Suire’ (‘A girl from beside the River Suire am I’) in his mockery of the French prisoner Monsieur Fer’s language. ‘Je suis le gentilhomme de bonne qualité. (M. Fer) ‘Cality! Calen o custure me.’ (Pistol). We Irish find it difficult to make ourselves understood, though the French prisoner fares no better, I suppose, ‘O Seigneur Dieu’ mistaken for his name. Pistol says, ‘Then Seigneur Dieu is a gentleman.’  Was the Good Lord flattered?