Sean,
   Almost the only part of your post that relates to poetry – “To read Paul Muldoon or Seamus Heaney is a classic gloss on violence in Ireland” – I’m afraid I find  neither “well put” nor, more to the point, in the least bit true or informative.
I can hear the list’s collective sigh: ‘O no, here we go again...’
But since I’ve kept silent for some ten months (after a knowingly false accusation directed at me by David) and since no-one else apparently finds this representation a caricature, I might as well speak.
Though your phrasing makes little sense, I’m guessing by your statement “To read (M and H) is a classic gloss...” you mean that both these two very different poets condone or in some way support violence in Ireland, and are in that sense the moral equivalents of the tv sitcom you mention. Could you elucidate this point? In what way “classic”? In what sense a “gloss”?
   Apart from the ambiguous, pre-Troubles “snug as a gun”, in Heaney’s poems every mention of guns, and they are frequent enough (“In poetry” you say “the violence is rarely addressed”) seems to me to come with an explicit moral recoil, and sometimes a vivid sense of disgust. Muldoon is rarely explicit about anything but I don’t see how that makes his poems a “gloss on violence”.
  Both these poets do, in their contrasting ways “address” violence. In mainland Britain, let alone the US, nearly all of us live in or near cities with significant gun crime. Are poets who happen not to address this topic necessarily culpable or collusive?
Jamie
 
From: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Tim Allen
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2014 10:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kate Tempest etc
 
I agree, very well put. Quite funny though that it should come under the heading Kate Tempest etc.
 
Cheers
 
Tim
On 4 Oct 2014, at 07:39, David Bircumshaw wrote:

that is well put, Sean. 
 
On 3 October 2014 20:55, Sean Carey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Overall the Cilla biopic was impressive and I often regret she moved more into Saturday night I.TV. rather than blending her two careers. She was one of many drawn into supporting the Conservatives from showbiz and pop music. Jim Davidson another who supported the Tory agenda when the party was in the position UKIP are moving into by targeting safe Labour seats. Mick Jagger's "Let's Work" proclaimed a similar message. 


In a modern Irish context "Mrs. Brown's Boys" is a huge viewing hit for Brendan O' Carroll and family in the U.K.. The presentation of modern Dublin in MBS offers a slapstick take on life in Mr. O' Carroll's Finglas suburb. Having worked in the area as well as living near it the realities of life are very different. It is a complex area with all the problems any W.European neighbourhood faces in 2014. The failure of the recent film reflected Brendan's limitations to move beyond the sitcom zone. 


The claims of O' Carroll to be a working class hero with P.R. stunts ignore the way the gun has become part of Irish life with drug gang shoot to kill tactics claiming many lives. Usually the dead or injured are canon fodder henchmen who work for their multi millionaire bosses. This brutal violence is not part of the O' Carroll picture of Dublin. In poetry the violence is rarely addressed nor the greed that sees blood flow and bullets fly often in view of children. Nor do I expect Bono to be addressing it on the new U2 album. 


Crime novels and films can be cosmetic and actual violence is rarely given the toxic impact it has. To read Paul Muldoon or Seamus Heaney is a classic gloss on violence in Ireland. The island has lost both political idealism and religous devotion in a very short space of time. The failure of anything to replace either is a worry we should consider in poetry. On this island the UKIP surge will change a lot of things our generation valued. The huge gains of the right across Europe last May showed us a recession does not help the left or the moderates.