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Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues
by Gearóid Mac Lochlainn
(Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2002)
Reviewed by Breandán Ó Cróinín
Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues is a collection of poetry from the Belfast Irish-language poet Gearóid Mac Lochlainn in which the original poems are accompanied by English translations by Mac Lochlainn himself and various well-known writers. Mac Lochlainn has published two other collections of poetry - Babylon Gaeilgeoir (1997) and Na Scéalaithe (1999) - and he recently became the first Irish-language recipient of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize. He is highly praised by Nuala Ní Dhomnaill in her introduction here:
I first heard him at the 'Pléaráca' festival in Connemara a few years ago and knew immediately that a new poetic star had arisen. He was the real thing, the genuine article. And he also brought with him a whole new, gritty, Belfast urban experience that has hardly been present in Irish for a long time . . . He himself well knows the difficulties of the artistic path he has chosen. He writes in a language which is not fashionable or profitable.
Stream of Tongues should bring Mac Lochlainn's work to a much wider audience and that, of course, is precisely the idea of the translations in this collection. The dual-language format used has brought international recognition to the work of more established poets such as Cathal Ó Searcaigh and Nuala Ní Dhomnaill. On the other hand, there are other major poets writing in Irish, such as Liam Ó Muirthile and Biddy Jenkinson, who resist having their work translated into English. Indeed, there is a school of thought which suggests that the increasing tendency to publish poetry in Irish with English translations on the opposite page is an unhealthy one for the language. Mac Lochlainn, who is also a musician, says in an afterward that the translations should be regarded as 'cover versions' (as suggested by Frank Sewell in his 'Translator's Preface' to Cathal Ó Searcaigh's Out in the Open).
The whole question of translation and the tension between Irish and English is cleverly dealt with in the poem 'Aistriúcháin/Translations,' where Mac Lochlainn shows that a sense of humour is essential for a poet in his position:
Tonight, my friends, there will be no translations,
nothing translated, altered, diluted
with hub-bubbly English
that turns my ferment of poems
to lemonade.
no, tonight, there will be no translations.
...
Sometimes, you get tired talking
to lazy Irish ears. Tired
of self-satisfied monoglots who say‹
It sounds lovely. I wish I had the Irish.
Don't you do translations?
The tradition of Irish-language literature and the Irish language itself is a recurrent theme throughout in such poems as 'Cainteoir Dúchais/Native Speaker,' 'Teanga/Tongue,' 'Teanga Eile/Second Tongue,' and 'Sruth Teangacha/Going with the Flow,' in which he takes the plunge into Irish:
I think I'll risk it
and swim in this untamed
deluge of Irish‹
you never know,
the labourer's shack
of poetry may grow
on its dusty verge
without marble halls
or conservatories
or the spirits and pucks of literature
that haunt them.
In 'Rogha an Fhile/Poet's Choice,' however, he is less certain:
I'm in a fix with this Chinese puzzle of a tongue -
Irish.
Why does it fret me?
I wasn't raised with it,
I'm not even a fluent speaker
(whatever that is).
. . .
And what about this poetry thing? This easy flow of words?
I'll tell you now for nothing
That I go for Ó Dónaill, not Dineen
And that life's too short to be hung up
On Old Irish, Middle Irish,
And that long-in-the-tooth old hag‹
The traditional thing.
Perhaps the strongest sequence of poems here is entitled 'Belfast Blues.' The long poem 'Trioblóidí/Troubles' brings home to us the reality of life in Belfast, both pre- and post-peace process:
Another taxi-man shot dead.
Six Catholics in six weeks. Or is it five?
I can't rightly remember.
. . .
Here I sit, minor poet of a minor war,
reporting from a kitchen trench in the frontline.
'Patrol,' which describes an everyday encounter with a British Army patrol on the streets of Belfast is also starkly effective:
I hear a back-pack radio, twigs
of static crackling underfoot in English
accents, whispering, closing in.
A black soldier, a teenager in a beret
smouldering dark-moon-eyes.
This could be his first patrol.
- Right mate, cold one innit? he says.
Trying to look or be friendly.
I almost answer, before slipping into character.
My eyes aim back a poisoned glance.
Later, the poet worries that the young soldier might think him a racist. Life is complex on the streets of Belfast.
Another sequence of poems featuring the character Mo Chara offers a humorous view of an alternative lifestyle. Mo Chara drinks, smokes dope and strums the acoustic guitar, hoping to give up his dead-end job and sing the blues. Mo Chara, too, considers the Irish-language question:
Mo Chara says he will never speak Irish again.
Not till the fuckin' cows come home to use his words.
Every eejit in this town has a cúpla focal, he says.
It's getting fuckin' trendy.
Stream of Tongues won't make Irish trendy on its own but it should certainly make people sit up and take note of Gearóid Mac Lochlainn. The original poems are finely crafted in urban Belfast Irish. The 'cover versions' are all of a high standard, and that is to be expected from the likes of Gabriel Rosenstock, Séamus Mac Annaidh, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Pearse Hutchinson and Rónán Ó Snodaigh, to name but a few. The book is very handsomely produced by Cló Iar-Chonnachta and comes with a CD which features some live readings of the poems. The dust jacket quotes Cathal Ó Searcaigh as saying that Mac Lochlainn has blown 'the living breath of youth into the old lungs of Irish.' On the evidence of this collection, Mac Lochlainn is indeed a rising star of Irish-language poetry.
Breandán Ó Cróinín is a lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.
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