Poem Five: Want/Plenty

I found reference to this document (the one that prompted this poem) from 1846 in the National Archives in Dublin in some things that a local historian had lent me. I was intrigued by the idea of labelling heads of households with W or P, so I went to see if for myself. It's in the Relief Commission Papers, set apart in an area of their own in the Library.It's a very tidy little handmade booklet, beautiful really. Just lists of townlands in the areas near Mohill, names and Ws and Ps. Perhaps the intentions behind the making of the list were sincere, but today it seems mostly like an act of absurdity. The elegant handwritten preface reads, verbatim: "Loughwrinn Union List. With an accurate acct of this town lands and the names of the persons seemingly distressed for subsistence living on said farms in the electoral division of Loughwrinn together with placing the letter P at the foot of every mans name where plentiness appeared and placing the letter W at the foot of the distressed mans or persons name which signifies want."

Poem Five: Want/Plenty

I counted the numbers of wants and plentys in the original document so that I could graphically represent it in the staircase poem. Over 5oo wants, over 200 plentys. The historical significance of that is highly questionable. Anyhow, I chose a font that is very thin and spidery, and thus extremely hard to "weed" --that's signmakers' lingo for the act of pulling away the excess vinyl around the cut letters. So many hours spent "weeding" in the studio. I liked it. I miss the physicality of painting and drawing in the poetry end of things. Getting to "weed" the text and apply it with my hands to the metal panels or the limestone walls is satisfying in the way that applying warm gesso to panels is, or mixing oil paints on a glass pallette.

Poem Five: Want/Plenty

Poem Five: Want/Plenty

Crappy photograph of part of the original document in the National Archives. Reproduced here with permission as part of the project. The P's are written more darkly and with more care, for some strange reason that I don't want to ponder too deeply.

Poem Four: No Bestseller/Zaden Bestseller

There are more posts about this installation towards the end of the blog. This poem's bilingual, in English and Polish, a language being spoken more and more in Ireland today due to the huge influx of Poles here since EU enlargement last year. It's also a language inextricably connected to the reinvigoration of poetry in the twentieth century. I'm holding a line that translates to "when I am dead." Fun!

Poem Three: Dirty Weather

Poem Three: Dirty Weather

The rain had to be dealt with. It comes down the wall and onto the stairs. When it hits the stairs, the poem reads, DIRTY WEATHER SHOCKIN!

Poem Three: Dirty Weather

Poem Three: Dirty Weather

"Rain" falling down the wall from the windows high above the staircase.

Poem Two: The Cleaheen Road

Comments from the Dock's Visitors' Book. One end of the Cleaheen Road is in County Roscommon and the other in County Leitrim.

Poem Two: The Cleaheen Road

The second poem in the series begins high up on the lime plaster wall above the staircase. It's about a road that links Carrick-on-Shannon to Cootehall, the village I live in. It's a narrow, windy road that follows the Boyle River as it moves into the Shannon. A beautiful road, the one that I rode my bicycle on years ago, and convinced me to move here. The edge of the poem mimics the road.

Poem One: Make Good

The first poem in this series coincided with the opening of the Dock. The building was originally the courthouse for the district of Carrick-on-Shannon and, since it was long the seat of the administration of colonial rule of law, it was not a bulding the local people warmed to. The Courthouse sits next to the old gaol buildings (now the County Council offices), and there is an underground tunnel connecting the two sites that was used to lead prisoners to and from the courtrooms. A dank, damp tunnel (photo is taken inside tunnel with grate newly added above it). The scaffold from which prisoners sentenced to death were hung is still affixed to the exterior of the old gaol building.

Since I've lived in the area, the Courthouse has been just a forbidding mass of hoarding as it was disused since 1994 and in bad structural shape. I made a number of visits to the site as it was being renovated (it's a really first-class, sensitive restoration/transformation overseen by Anne Fletcher from Coady Partnership, architects in Dublin) and found the seed for the first poem in the notes that Anne had made for the construction drawings. Then I ran into my neighbor in front of the building one morning, and he gave me the poem's first line verbatim. The photo here gives the entire text of the poem in its un-installed state. I'll type the poem in below too, as it might be hard to read from the photo, depending on your screen size. The text editing in Blogger doesn't do strikethroughs, which is what should be seen in the words "concrete slab" in line 13 below. The architects originally planned to completely cover over the prisoner tunnel. Then they changed their minds and covered in with a steel grate, so you can still look down into it and just imagine.

One Make Good

Séan said, No, I never had reason
to go into THAT place, Thanks be to God.
He cocked a calloused thumb
at the mass of scaffold
(dread word!) and blue hoarding--
Carrick-on-Shannon courthouse
where a poem is constructing
itself in the architects' general notes:

Match original lime harling render.
All existing to be made good.
Keep, salvage, strip, paint, repair.
Enclose tunnel access for prisoners to old
Gaol with concrete slab steel grate.
Overhaul, take down, cart away, keep level.
Open up. Hack off. Rake out. Reinstate.
Drains to be back-filled with river gravel.

Poem One: Make Good

Detail of the poem installed on the staircase.

Poem One: Make Good

People sit and pass the time on stairs, not in escalators or elevators.

Poem Four: More Photos

The photo in the previous post shows a general aspect of the staircase. The one alongside this photo show the text of the poem in better detail.
The Polish translation and the English text alternate line by line.