Everything to Play For: 99 Poems about Sport E-Book

• Herausgeber: Poetry Ireland
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 119

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Sometimes sport takes over Irish life: we meet up at the match everyone is going to, or we stay in touch by talking about sport. And sport's the stuff of family lore – the wrong turn at Ballybrit that led to Connemara instead of the Galway Races, the ex who came good with tickets, the All-Ireland winner throwing an American football on the beach. The poems collected in this anthology know sport, and they respond to the way that sport in Ireland forms our alternative history, viewed from the stands, the sideline, and the centre circle. The first ever anthology of sports poems to be published in Ireland, Everything to Play For is edited by poet John McAuliffe and includes a foreword by World Champion athlete Sonia O'Sullivan, one of Ireland's best-loved sporting heroes. With poems on all major sporting disciplines, Everything to Play For brings together the work of many of Ireland's leading poets including Paul Durcan, Vona Groarke, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Kennelly, Michael Longley, Louis MacNeice, Sinéad Morrissey, Paul Muldoon, Enda Wyley, and many more.

Leseprobe

Everything

To Play For

99 Poems About Sport

Poetry Ireland Ltd / Éigse Éireann Teo gratefully acknowledges the assistance of The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted.

ISBN: 978-1-902121-57-4

DESIGN: Niall McCormack www.hitone.ie

EBOOK CONVERSION: Ben Styles leeds-ebooks.co.uk

First published by Poetry Ireland, 2015

www.poetryireland.ie

Everything

To Play For

99 Poems About Sport

Edited by

John McAuliffe

Foreword by

Sonia O’Sullivan

Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1    TENNIS & TABLE TENNIS

Paul Durcan

A Spin in the Rain with Seamus Heaney

Vona Groarke

The Game of Tennis in Irish History

Iggy McGovern

The Difference

Fergus Allen

Tennis in Wicklow

Paul Muldoon

How to Play Championship Tennis

2    GAELIC FOOTBALL

Pádraig J. Daly

Footballer

Seamus Heaney

Station Island, VII

Gabriel Fitzmaurice

Munster Football Final 1924

Bernard O’Donoghue

Munster Final

Noel Monahan

The Football Field

Seamus Heaney

The Point

Michael Hartnett

Reconstructionists

Brendan Kennelly

The Madness of Football

Brendan Kennelly

A Religious Occasion

Peter Fallon

Hay

Bernard O’Donoghue

Croke Park or Ballylee, 1989

Martina Evans

A Man’s World

Paul Durcan

Sport

3    HORSE RACING

Peggie Gallagher

The Three Card Trick Man

Tom French

The Race Field

Gerard Fanning

Laytown Races, 1959

Padraic Fallon

Gowran Park, Autumn Meeting

W.B. Yeats

At Galway Races

Tom Duddy

The Racing Festival

Frank Ormsby

Action Replays

Mary Noonan

Lone Patrol

F.R. Higgins

The Old Jockey

Martina Evans

The Wide World

4    GOLF, PITCH & PUTT

Matthew Sweeney

The Yellow Golf Ball on the Lawn

Maurice Riordan

He Begins With A Line by Sandy Lyle

Conor O’Callaghan

Pitch & Putt

David Wheatley

Moonshine

John O’Donnell

Poetry

Dermot Bolger

Remembering Certain Golf Holes

5    HANDBALL & BOWLS

Seamus Heaney

Squarings, XI

Martin Dyar

Handball Legend

Greg Delanty

After Viewing The Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne, 1847

6    SOCCER

Brendan Kennelly

Manager, Perhaps

Robert Greacen

Goals

David Park

George Best

Miriam Gamble

Tinkerness

Elaine Feeney

Ryan Giggs is a Ride

Paul Durcan

The Beautiful Game

Alan Gillis

If There was Time All Day to Wait

Rita Ann Higgins

Ireland Is Changing Mother

Paul Muldoon

Soccer Moms

Tom French

The Fathers Raising the Nets for theLast Game of the Season: a Triptych

7    RUNNING

John O’Donnell

Sports Day

Theo Dorgan

Running with the Immortals

Colette Bryce

Great North

Gerry Murphy

Keeping in Shape

8    CYCLING

Vincent Woods

Bicycle

Louis MacNeice

The Cyclist

John F. Deane

Bikes

9    FISHING, ARCHERY, FALCONRY & SKIING

Sebastian Barry

Two Brothers Up

Patrick Deeley

Fisherman

Ciaran Carson

Finding the Ox

Caitríona O’Reilly

The Curée

Paula Cunningham

Seeing Things

10    INDOOR / OUTDOOR SPORTS & GAMES

Conor O’Callaghan

Green Baize Couplets

Paul Durcan

The 2003 World Snooker Championship

Louis MacNeice

Soap Suds

Louis MacNeice

Darts & Shove halfpenny

Seamus Heaney

Squarings, III

Gerard Smyth

Marbles

Matthew Sweeney

The Glass Chess Set

11    BOXING

Daragh Breen

Boxer

Patrick Kavanagh

A Knight at the Tournament

Michael Longley

The Boxers

Declan Ryan

Rope-a-Dope

12    WATER SPORTS

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

The Last Glimpse of Erin

Sinéad Morrissey

Forty Lengths

Pat Boran

Learning to Dive

Leontia Flynn

Saturday in the Pool

Conor O’Callaghan

The End of the Line

Gerry Murphy

Swimming Out

Mary O’Malley

Surfing

13    HURLING & CAMOGIE

Paul Durcan

The One-Armed Crucifixion

Patrick Deeley

Minding Goal

Michael Gorman

Camogie

Patrick Kavanagh

Camogie Match

John FitzGerald

Ecstasis

Liam Murphy

Donal Foley Played Hurling with My Father

Bryan MacMahon

A Song for Christy Ring

Theo Dorgan

Learning My Father’s Memories

Billy Ramsell

Lament for Christy Ring

Enda Wyley

On My Father’s Birthday

Tom French

A Laminated Hurley

14    AMERICAN SPORTS

Frank McGuinness

American Football in Booterstown Park

Conor O’Callaghan

Game Night

Greg Delanty

Tagging the Stealer

Paul Muldoon

Chunkey

15    RUGBY & CRICKET

Louis MacNeice

Rugby Football Excursion

John O’Donnell

Team Photo

Thomas McCarthy

The Cappoquin Cricket XI

Gerard Fanning

Offering the Light

16    THE DOGS

Paul Muldoon

At Master McGrath’s Grave

Ciaran Carson

Night Music

Maurice Riordan

The Holy Land

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foreword

YOU MIGHT wonder why I’m writing the foreword to a poetry anthology, even if it is poetry inspired by sport. When I was told about this book my first thoughts went to all those times when people commented that watching me run was like poetry in motion, like a gazelle in the distance eating up the ground.

And that is exactly how it is for me, particularly if I’m out for a run on my own. People often ask me what do you think about when you’re out running. It’s one of the hardest questions to answer, as so many thoughts go through my mind, so many great ideas if only I could break them down into a little rhyme that I could recall and share when standing in front of an audience. My thoughts drift as I reflect on recent events or recall a medal-winning run or great training session. Days when everything just flowed with effortless strides. When I returned home, if only I could have ordered my thoughts and put them on paper! But they were soon dispersed as I was brought back to the reality of daily life once the early morning run was over.

Sport is such that those immersed in it will never be satisfied, rarely will you get the perfect day and even when you do it drives you on to achieve more. As athletes we all work hard training and preparing for the events that lie ahead, we all have the ingredients to get a great result, but it’s how you mix those ingredients together and the care and patience you take in training that will deliver the perfect result. Poetry too I’m sure needs such patience and care. It’s a form of the written word that can be interpreted in many ways, just like a boxing match or an Olympic race: if you have a room full of people watching, they will all predict the outcome in their own way, and believe that if different decisions were made then the outcome would have been different. When the race is over we can all look back and think, what could I have done differently? Even if you win you still think you could’ve run faster, or played better, or tried a little harder.

I have competed at the highest levels in sport and now I take part in a really wide range of activities. Only recently over the course of a weekend I climbed the highest mountain in Ireland and cycled the Beara Peninsula. The sheer beauty carried me up and down the hills alongside people of all abilities taking part and immersing themselves in sport.

The Olympic motto ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ was proposed in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games. He said, ‘These three words represent a programme of moral beauty. The aesthetics of sport are intangible.’ That aesthetic is easier to feel than it is to explain, and Coubertin also went on to add to this motto, in 1908, ‘The most important thing is not to win but to take part.’

I understand more now about the enjoyment and satisfaction of taking part, of being involved, sharing and inspiring the next generation. We can’t all be Olympic champions but we can all get out there, take part and feel the joy and satisfaction so often seen when watching great sporting feats and achievements, many of which have inspired the poems that are compiled for your enjoyment in this wonderful book.

Sonia O’Sullivan

INTRODUCTION

Bright Particular Star

‘I USED to run with my friend when he was training to keep him in company. He would give me a long start and soon overtake me.’ So wrote W.B. Yeats of his teenage athletics training, and then, in relation to his enthusiasm for sport: ‘I followed the career of a certain professional runner for months, buying papers that would tell me if he had won or lost. I had seen him described as “the bright particular star of American athletics,” and the wonderful phrase had thrown enchantment over him.’

Almost everyone has similar stories about ‘bright particular stars’ they followed, or still follow, runners or hurlers, a jockey or footballer or tennis player whose excellence shines out week after week and from year to year. And who is to say that Yeats’s devotion to the solitary art of writing was not in some way formed by his youthful interest in athletics? The discipline, practice and exposingly public occasions of the writing life do have something in common with the athlete’s, and may explain why so many Irish poets have been drawn to sport. Given the hundreds of poems on the subject, it is striking that no anthology like this has been published before now.

Sport has long been at the heart of people’s relationships in Irish life: it is one of the ways in which we stay in touch and one of the pleasures of our continuing conversations with one another. And sport’s the stuff of family lore – the wrong turn at Ballybrit that led to Connemara instead of the Galway Races, the ex who came good with tickets, the All-Ireland winner throwing an American football on the beach one summer’s day. And it continues to be the better, social part of many working lives, whether at a workplace gym, a group that meets for Sunday runs, or increasingly slow-paced Monday evening five-a-sides on deteriorating pitches, where knee injuries, parenthood and job changes increasingly encroach. Some poets have wondered, then, at how sports get compartmentalized and separated from high art: Bernard O’Donoghue asks, one September day, ‘Should we go up to the All-Ireland final / or repeat another tried pilgrimage / […] to Yeats’s Tower?’, but this is a choice which many of the poems here refuse to make. Instead, these poets, like O’Donoghue, bring together the private moment of the lyric poem with the more public occasion of the sporting event.

Many of the poems collected in this anthology respond to the way that sport has formed a kind of alternative national narrative: maybe it is true that we measure out our lives in relation to sporting events, from 1978 and the sheer, quick-witted imagination of Mikey Sheehy’s lobbing a free over Paddy Cullen; to 1979, the year Brady set up the Cup winner against Utd; to 1982 with Seamus Darby and his two wild leaps after his late goal; the midnight session of tea and biscuits as Dennis Taylor peered through his big glasses at each eminently missable black in 1985, the same year Barry McGuigan defeated Eusebio Pedroza; Stephen Roche turning a corner seconds behind Pedro Delgado in 1987, crossing the line and collapsing and needing oxygen (and his great peer Sean Kelly dominating the classics all that decade); David O’Leary’s penalty in 1990; Sonia running away from Ribeiro in 1995 in Gothenberg (and her great race with Gabriela Szabo in Sydney in 2000); 1999 is Ben O’Connor pointing from the sideline in the rain, and so on…

Poets have been drawn to those moments when a sport-star or event brings us out of ourselves and into an imagined community: in this book there are exalting tributes to George Best (and Ryan Giggs), Sonia O’Sullivan and Paula Radcliffe, Ken Doherty and Master McGrath. And Christy Ring who, in Billy Ramsell’s poem, becomes a CGI marvel: ‘his stick of ashy liquidity / that’s rippling, eel-flexible, alive. // And now his body it is liquid too, / an impressionist version of itself / as he slights the wall of three defenders, / pours himself through some improbable gap / and on the other side re-solidifies.’

These poems take a vicarious pleasure in the feats of sportsmen and sportswomen: the thrill and intensity of bringing work to a very high level, the sense of achievement in preparing for and completing an event. They somehow find and communicate exactly how we feel about the pleasure of working at full capacity.

But sport is more than a heroic enterprise and the ‘actual’ national narrative also figures strongly in these poems: sport is intricately interwoven into every aspect of Irish society. The backdrop to the Parnells playing tennis in 1871 is, for Vona Groarke, ‘incident and outrage’, while Gabriel Fitzmaurice observes the ‘open wounds’ of the Civil War recede as team-mates line out together so that ‘on Con Brosnan’s safe conduct Sheehy takes the field.’ Seamus Heaney’s great long poem Station Island powerfully centres on a figure whose humanity is brought home in lines like: ‘he was still that same / rangy midfielder in a blue jersey /and starched pants, the one stylist on the team, // the perfect clean, unthinkable victim’, and Rita Ann Higgins imagines a changing Ireland where ‘the Namibian gods and the Bally Bane Taliban / are bringing the local yokels / to their menacing senses /and scoring more goals than Cú Chulainn.’

But if sport lends itself to the marking of public occasions, more often the poets find angles that would not make the news. There is a reason why in their poems about horse-racing, both Peggie Gallagher and Tom Duddy begin with the line, ‘The reason I come here is not the horses’: what they are after instead is caught by Padraic Fallon’s beautiful images of a winter meeting in Gowran Park, ‘A low sun noses through the damps; / The trees are bare down to the stumps; / A mist can spring up white as lime.’ And Gerard Fanning’s take on the Laytown Races is similarly original and atmospheric as it catches the sporting event’s potential: ‘I’ll soon be called to eat or swim. / The horses are held back with bunting. / A langourous tide is coming in.’