Derek Mahon article from Paul R. Hyde. Derek Mahon: The Forger, The Hunt by Night, A Disused Shed, Courtyards in Delft

Derek Mahon

"There is a copiousness and excitement about these poems that is to be found only in work of the highest order." Seamus Heaney.

"The man/ Who laughs is merely someone/ Who has not yet heard the terrible news." Derek Mahon.

Five star poet and playwright of the first water, many of Mahon's poems are by now canonical —The Forger, The Hunt by Night, A Disused Shed, Van Gogh in the Borinage.

The Hunt by Night (OUP, 1982) contains a number of Mahon's most distinctive and memorable poems, among them Courtyards in Delft, Girls on the Bridge, and The Hunt by Night. Each is a poet's interpretation of and meditation on a famous painting — and each is an intimate and balanced interaction between the visual and the oral/aural. Between the visual language of the paintings and the movement of the poems there is a dynamic of multiple tensions which is almost strong enough to transform these pictures into motion pictures. These magnificently resonant poems add a temporal/historical dimension to the paintings which undermines their essentially static illusion. When this temporal/historical dimension is unlocked in the paintings, they become, for the poet and the reader, revelatory epiphanies of the terror of history. And the paintings the reader now 'sees' are recreated by the poems.

De Hooch's Courtyards in Delft exudes humility and the stability of domestic routine whereas in Mahon's Courtyards in Delft the poet is not deceived that the scene is wholly innocent. Mahon subtly evokes the Orange armies of empire and of 1690 — only thirty years after the De Hooch painting. "... the rain swept gorse" is Ireland and the "hard-nosed companions" are the predecessors of the Orange bigots of the Six Counties. The addition of the temporal dimension implies a denial of the innocent reality so faithfully depicted by the Dutch artist. And nothing can save us from the brutality of greed and empire — save perhaps the Maenads, those sluttish Greek groupies who, in a frantic gesture, the poet invites to invade and, yes, to do something Dionysian with the quiet town of Delft - smash the place up.

Girls on the Bridge, a perfect sestet, stereoscopically evokes two of Edvard Munch's most famous paintings: Girls on a Bridge and The Scream. When the complex energy of language is haunted out of the paintings, they begin to tremble like things come alive. Once again the latent terror of violence is held back until the closing lines; imbued with 'time sense', the recreated paintings seem to shiver with a profound apprehension of imminent doom.

The Hunt by Night is an exquisite sestet, an elegant verbal vehicle for the atavistic blood instinct sublimated in the 'game' of hunting. The measured dance of the verses articulates both the "elaborate spectacle" aspect of the hunt depicted in Uccello's painting, and - through the run-on pace of the stanzas - the 'heat' of the hunt. The rhetorical closure is the 'kill' which ensures the survival of the blood instinct — for another day.

All true poets are shamanic ventriloquists — they make the dead breathe again, speak again, find voice where before there was silence. Mahon's poetry is of the night; a night music to be heard before dawn threatens, it resonates with the terror of an imminent and appalling awareness.

Ah well, who fears to speak of a disused shed? In a country where even the postman and the taxi driver are giving out with spondees and dactyls and all classes of versified doggerel, the competition is fierce but Mahon ranks among most popular living writers in Ireland today.

Recommended reading:

Derek Mahon & Modern Irish Poetry by Hugh Haughton. Lilliput, Dublin. (forthcoming)
The Poetry of Derek Mahon. Elmer Kennedy-Andrews (Ed) Gerard Smythe, 2002.
Derek Mahon: Extreme Religion of Art by Edna Longley in Poetry in Contemporary Irish Literature ed. Michael Kenneally pub. 1995 Colin Smythe.