I don't think there's any right or wrong here, just unique individuals with
singular paths, career-arcs and personal trajectories.
I can understand Maireads position, and how she felt the need to get out of
Dublin to get on as it was so tight to get into unless yr in the right mob.
And i can understand gerladines stance, which is more one of principle, that
women only has served the main purpose.
When i first came across geraldines work, around three yrs ago, i thought it
she was the most original female voice i'd come across, but then i am a
fellow lancastrian and reading her gave me beleif that my own lancashire
voice was as poetically valid as any from the Flrio society in Magdalene
college say, which until reading her, was that little bit less along the
track of faith.
Mairead, i didn't read first but witnessed reading and being a new knob in
dublin a few months into the mad dream of doing what mairead did, feeling i
had to leave my *home* country to stand a chance, and still in the stage of
stupidly thinking that being published somehow meant they weren't as
talented as me, just coz i wasn't (jealousy of course) and her being an
invited giesty and me a bogger on the open mic; i wanted her to be rfubbish
to cofirm my own prejudices.
But she impressed me as much live as G had on the page and even though i did
not speak with her, the short time i witnessed her was enough to become a
convert.
And the thing with MOB, is that i read the poem which impressed me most,
after seeing her read it, and on the page, if i hadn't of heard mairead read
it, would have started ranting it wasn't poetry, again because of arrogance
and less poetic experience in the tank than mairead has.
It was a poem so outrageously working, and through a very high level of
poetic nous, one in which she takes a phrase and repeats it over and over,
which on the page looked...hmmm...but when read, the nuance of inflection
made the same phrase redolent with shifts of meaning every time.
So in ten minutes watching her, i learnt a lot and became better for it,
same as the Monk.
I think the thing about poetry is, finding yr voice, and Kavanagh says we
are all geniuses, as we are all unique individual human beings and the trick
is to be ourself as true as poss.
So, Dublin for mairead was somewhere she had to leave, and somewhere i had
to come, in order to truly find myself. So you say no more woman only, and
another is ambivalent, both being right, for them.
And this may be contentious, but it does seem that women, much more than
men, if they disagree, can do so civilly and without rancor (though with
obvious blokey women Maggie T ER1 exceptions).
And a friend of mine who gave me this idea, qualified her opinion that women
in general have more empathy towards each other than men, -- part way --
because most women get PMT, and it is lucky she doesn't read here as she
expressly told me not to mention it, but i can't help myself.
She says that most woman, will immediately understand if another woman makes
reference to this physical state, and my friend, it is funny as we have had
some right ding dongs of her getting weepy, and i will ask, is it the time
of the month and it is. Some months are worse than others. Once she rang me
in tears from the city centre of Dublin after she had left Eddie Rockets
after forgetting to pay the bill and the security fella, who was totally
understanding about it, came out and told her, but she felt the waitress had
been trying to make her feel like a crook, and i couldn't understand why she
was so upset until i asked her, and now it is great as even if she goes into
one with me, as she always does to some degree once a month, we can laugh
about it.
Maybe this is all rot, i dunno, but men, rarely get to talk of this subject,
even though women have traditionally since the New Labour age, been behaving
as bad as men with alcohol and laddette behaviour.
It's all just what Bob taught me, the part of his course which is the most
important in some ways for the po-mo'er, the open ended *specualtive
discourse*, like chuck B advocates, which means we do not have to have a
specific purpose or point in our musings, just an open ended blather, just
to find out and firm up what we think..
gra agus siochainn
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