Reflections on the Man and the Poet
Dublin Memorial Speech by Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate in Literature.
Michael Hartnett's death is a grief to all who knew him and a hurt to poetry. He had such a focus and intensity that he seemed death-proof. He was like a bird, a totally living presence, with a terrific gift for telling the truth. Anyone who saw him on the recent TV documentary about his life and work couldn't have failed to recognize the high intelligence and integrity in everything he said. I'll never forget reading his first short poems in the early sixties; they had a kind of hypnotic power, as if a new Orpheus had emerged from Newcastle West. He was Limerick's Lorca, a combination of avant-garde daring and the native duchas, with a marvellous ability to combine original artistic sprightliness with great and simple humanity. Lovable and yet separate, within his own field of force. He followed his own impulse and never sucked up to any audience. His life-line reached back into Irish and there was a bare emotional force to everything he did, an ability all his own to write passionately and directly. He was utterly the lyric poet and would have been as much at home with the eighth century monks as with the eighteenth century spailpins.. What Tadhg O'hUiginn wrote about his brother four hundred years ago applies to what many of us feel today. I have substituted Michael's name in my translation of the lines: "Through his death I realize. how I value poetry. O hut of our mystery, emptied. and isolated always. O'hAirtneide is dead. Poetry is daunted. A stave of the barrel is smashed. And the wall of learning broken."
Newcastle West Memorial Speech by Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Poet and Friend.
"Her eyes were coins of porter and her West Limerick voice talked velvet in the house: her hair was black as the glossy fireplace wearing with grace her Sunday-night-dance best. She cut the froth from glasses with a knife and hammered golden whiskies on the bar and her mountainy body tripped the gentle mechanism of verse"........ This is Windle's pub in Glensharrold, a few miles outside Newcastle West; the girl is Mary Donovan, a Windle by descent. The year is sometime before 1975. Thus begins A Farewell to English. Here we have the poet Michael Hartnett possessing his locality, his muse and his lost language. Michael Hartnett lived his art. He subscribed to no school. The division between the life and the art disappeared in Michael Hartnett. His was the perceived life of the Gaelic poet - leitheidi Aindrias Mac Craith, the Limerick Rake, Daibhi O' Bruadair. Their life was his life. Drink would be part of that life. There would be no regrets. I knew him as a friend. He was best man at our wedding in 1981. But more than that, he was my teacher. Michael was a perfectionist - he demanded of others what he demanded of himself. He was ruthless with a red biro. A more fragile talent would have been devastated by Hartnett the teacher, but I was determined to learn from him. And learn I did in the open University of Newcastle West - in the Shamrock Bar under the watchful eyes of Peg Devine and Tony Sheehan, in the Ten Knights, in John Barry's, in CulIen's, the Tally Ho, Lynch's, in the Central Hotel courtesy of Arthur and Vera Ward. He taught me "first how to hate language - loose language, cliched language. This hatred was the measure of his love. For Michael Hartnett was a lover of language. He wrote in English and Irish. He translated from Spanish, Chinese, Hungarian and German. Hartnett the translator held out his hand to other traditions, other sensibilities, and this enriched his poetry. I came to Michael Hartnett through the ballad. In my first years with Writers' Week, Listowel, I was director of its Newly Composed Ballad Competition. I was anxious to invigorate what was in danger of becoming a lazy exercise and argued for the involvement of a poet/musician. Nora Relihan, the Chairperson and Mary Gore, the Secretary immediately recommended Michael Hartnett. So in some awe I drove to Glendarragh in Templeglantine, the poet's residence. I was welcomed with open arms. For balladry was central to Michael Hartnett. Among his unsung works is his love poem to his native place, the brilliant Maiden Street Ballad, which concludes "So now to conclude and to finish my song: it wasn't composed to do decent men wrong -if I had known it would go on so long I'd have finished before I got started. And in times to come if you want to dip back into the past, through these pages flip, and if you enjoy it, raise a glass to your lips and drink to the soul of Mike Hartnett!" I'll drink to that any day. But Michael Hartnett taught us a great lesson. If the consolation of religion is to enable us to walk in the light, then Hartnett the poet teaches us not to be afraid of the dark. I want to dedicate this short lyric to the memory of the poet Hartnett: ................."SO WHAT IF THERE'S NO HAPPY ENDING? (in memoriam Michael Hartnett) So what if there's no happy ending? Don't be afraid of the dark; Open the door into darkness And hear the black dogs bark. Oh what a wonder is darkness! In it you can view The moon and stars of your nature That daylight hid from you. Open the door into darkness, There's nothing at all to fear - Just the black dogs barking, barking As the moon and stars appear."........... Mike, teacher, friend, your death diminishes us. We are thrown back on the cold consolation of words. But death will have no dominion, the grave no victory. As we bid you farewell here today, I salute a noble and gentle soul, man who will live wherever poetry is read. Ar Dheis Dego raibh do anam uasal. Ni bheidh do leitheid aris ann. Slan.
Dublin Memorial Speech by Dan McMahon, Close Family Friend.
If you can picture this scene. It is 1985 in John B's in Listowel, a few friends are sitting at a table with Michael and John B. "Look at him" John B. says pointing at Michael "he is like an exotic bird." And exotic is how I found him when we first met in 1969. We were both night telephonists in Exchequer St Telephone exchange. It's worth recounting that when he first met the Knight of Glin, the good Knight introduced himself "Desmond Fitzgerald Knight of Glin" and Michael replied "Michael Hartnett Night Telephonist." He was the first poet I knew and he shattered some preconceived notions. I thought all poets were layabouts who just thought themselves more sensitive than the rest of us. But I found that Michael was more sensitive, in fact, although it may sound like a cliche, he was a tortured soul. He was fostered out to his grandmother, Bridget Halpin, as a child and he never recovered from it. "I was abandoned to (their) tragedies" he says "minor but unhealing". He knows the child in the Dal Riada poem "craving an absent breast". If it's true what Kavanagh said that God enters through a wound, God would have no difficulty in entering the soul of Michael Hartnett. o He believed he had magical powers, indeed that all poets had magical powers. Part of that magic was that if he stated something to be true, it would come true, even if this was impossible. It was exasperating. Still, I knew he had some magical powers. Going to the west some 10 years ago, he managed to change his suit in the rear seat of a tiny car: He just bobbed up and down and there he was in a different suit. A feat worthy of Houdini. And then there was the tiny armchair. It had been made for my son Aziz when he just 2 years old and although physically impossible, Michael often slept soundly in it. He could be a marvelous companion and he loved people, he spoke to everybody and he even suffered fools gladly. He needed a drink to kick-start his amazingly gregarious nature and although alcohol makes most people dull, coarse and ugly, Michael became a kind of dancing dervish full of talk, stories and song. He could sing from all the famous operas, not just the well- known arias and his party piece was the duet from Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers". He sang both Zurga's and Nadir's parts. Duirt Liam O'Muirithe mar gheall air "Ba Tuisce leis dan na saol agus do bhi an cheart aige ". Agus uireannta ba tuisce leis deoch na saol. And he was a good cook. I can still picture him cooking with the glass of wine in one hand and cigarette in the other, and magically producing wonderful food. He cooked often but most notably a sumptuous feast for my wife's 40th birthday, it was his way of repaying the odd borrowed fiver. As well as poet, balladeer, singer and raconteur. He taught me about St John of the Cross, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, O'Bruadair and O'Rathaille. He was always broke but he was stylish. He hired a chauffer driven Austin Princess for Lara and Niall's christening in the priory inTallaght. And on the day he left the Telephone exchange he bought 100 pints for his colleagues in O'Neill's in Suffolk St. He would like to have been compared to Andreas McCraith the Limerick rake poet, but he was much too frail for that role. If he had 5 pints of do bhi a ahotain aige, beioir tareis sos no codhladh tiocfaidh se har nais. But mostly his capacity was small, although he won't mind if there is myth about his drinking. It was only later when he took the shorts that the terrible damage was done. And if his spoken word relied too much on hubris, there was no doubting its written counterpart: the adjective that cropped up most at the Newcastle West funeral was "authentic". And I think that when his work is reassessed the Inchicore Haiku will have a special place. It is flawless. The steady 17 syllables never waver, never appear forced and Hartnett is always at eye level with the Inchicore people. Haiku No. 13 goes: "In the Richmond House A good priest pressed in my hand glad absolution" This was Fr. Tom Stack who celebrated the Mass today. Michael would be pleased also that the Seannos singer who sang during the offertory, Eamonn O'Donnacadh, is from Bluebell here in Inchicore. And also that his goddaughter Bonnie Alexandra Hickey (BAH), to whom the last poem of "Poems to Younger Women" is dedicated, is here this evening. I think it's no exaggeration to say that Michael was a big influence in my life. I last saw him a month ago and I noticed that the no admission sign which he often generated was gone and we had arranged to meet at his friend Christine Dwyer Hickey's New Year's eve party. Instead I am trying to think of an epitaph. I think that Dean Swifts epitaph would have suited Michael: He is gone "where savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go traveller and imitate if you can" Also very apt would be the lines Seamus Heaney wrote a few days ago. It's a translation of Taigh O'Huiginn, writing 400 years ago about his brother. He substitutes Michael's name for O'Huiginn: "O'hAairtneide is dead. Poetry is daunted. A stave of the barrel is smashed And the wall of learning broken" But perhaps just as apt would be one of his own Haikus, the last of the 87: "My dead father shouts From his eternal labour "These are your, people!" Michael, "Ar Dhes De go raibh do anam uasal."
