0:00:04 > 0:00:07The secret of writing poetry, it has been said, is to find
0:00:12 > 0:00:15is at bottom your child mind,
0:00:15 > 0:00:18that a poet's words and subjects
0:00:28 > 0:00:32So, what I want to do is to explore
0:00:46 > 0:00:49But I'd like to think that the subject not only leads back there,
0:01:03 > 0:01:06to step into the same river twice.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21The River Moyola flows south-east
0:01:25 > 0:01:42and enters Lough Neagh just a
0:01:42 > 0:01:46linking the townland of Broagh to the townland of Bellshill.
0:01:46 > 0:01:50We used to paddle around the gravel
0:01:50 > 0:01:54and I always loved venturing out from one stepping stone to the
0:01:54 > 0:01:57next, right into the middle
0:01:57 > 0:02:00For even though the river was narrow enough and shallow enough,
0:02:00 > 0:02:03there was a feeling of daring
0:02:03 > 0:02:06into the main flow of the current.
0:02:08 > 0:02:11away from the safety of the bank,
0:02:14 > 0:02:18You were giddy and rooted to the spot at one and the same time.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21Your body stood stock-still,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28But your head would be light and swimming from the rush of the river
0:02:28 > 0:02:31at your feet and the big, stately
0:02:31 > 0:02:34in the sky above your head.
0:02:42 > 0:02:46Nowadays when I think of that child
0:02:46 > 0:02:51I see a little version of the god the Romans called Terminus,
0:02:54 > 0:02:58The Romans kept an image of Terminus
0:02:58 > 0:03:02on Capitol Hill and the interesting
0:03:02 > 0:03:06above the place where the image sat
0:03:09 > 0:03:13and the borders of the Earth needed
0:03:13 > 0:03:19the whole unlimited height and width and depth of the heavens themselves.
0:03:21 > 0:03:24boundaries are necessary evils
0:03:24 > 0:03:27the truly desirable condition
0:03:27 > 0:03:32is the feeling of being unbounded,
0:03:54 > 0:03:58Terminus appears in many Irish place
0:03:58 > 0:04:02meaning the glebe land attached to
0:04:02 > 0:04:08land of any sort marked off for
0:04:08 > 0:04:11from very early on, I recognised
0:04:11 > 0:04:15was a special marker of a very
0:04:23 > 0:04:29but also when I stood on the bridge
0:04:29 > 0:04:41and look directly down at the flow where the trout were darting about
0:04:41 > 0:04:45where my mother's people lived in a terraced house with an archway
0:04:45 > 0:04:49of roses over the front pathway and a vegetable garden at the back.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53Castledawson could have been in any
0:04:53 > 0:05:02spick-and-span English mill village,
0:05:02 > 0:05:05In this case, the factory horn
0:05:09 > 0:05:13and then to let them all go home.
0:05:13 > 0:05:15Home to New Row and Boyne Row,
0:05:19 > 0:05:22and the Protestant church, up past the entrance to Moyola Park
0:05:22 > 0:05:25where the Castledawson soccer team
0:05:25 > 0:05:29Chichester-Clarks lived their life
0:05:29 > 0:05:31behind the walls of their demesne.
0:05:31 > 0:05:36All that was, mentally, on one side of the river, as well as physically.
0:05:36 > 0:05:40On the other, there was the parish of Bellaghy or Ballyscullion,
0:05:50 > 0:05:54Their kitchens had open fires rather
0:05:54 > 0:05:59Their houses stood in the middle of fields rather than in a terrace.
0:05:59 > 0:06:00And the people who lived in them
0:06:00 > 0:06:04listened to the cattle roaring
0:06:08 > 0:06:12I knew the Ballaghy side of things was not only in a different
0:06:12 > 0:06:16physical place, but in a sort of different cultural space as well.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22In my mind, Bellaghy belonged not only to Gaelic football, but also
0:06:22 > 0:06:28to the much older Gaelic order of cattle herding and hillforts.
0:06:31 > 0:06:32first Monday of every month.
0:06:32 > 0:06:37The streets would be crammed with cows and heifers and bullocks
0:06:38 > 0:06:43the whole place loud and stinking
0:06:44 > 0:06:48of unruly activity like that
0:06:51 > 0:06:55Castledawson was a far more
0:06:55 > 0:06:58more a part of the main drag.
0:06:58 > 0:07:03The very name of the place is from
0:07:06 > 0:07:09whereas Bellaghy - Baile Eachaidha -
0:07:09 > 0:07:14more obscure origin, in Irish.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16So, as I once said in a poem,
0:07:16 > 0:07:21a poem called Terminus, as a
0:07:26 > 0:07:29between the predominantly loyalist
0:07:31 > 0:07:46and the predominantly nationalist and Catholic district of Bellaghy.
0:07:46 > 0:08:02On a border between townlands
0:08:06 > 0:08:09clear ring of the Ulster Irish
0:08:09 > 0:08:22to the Gaeltacht or Rannafast.
0:08:26 > 0:08:33like the word "hoke", for example.
0:08:37 > 0:08:41not standard English and it's not an Irish language word either,
0:08:41 > 0:08:47as far as I know, but it is there at the foundation of speech,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52under me, like the floor of the
0:08:52 > 0:08:54Something to write home about,
0:08:54 > 0:08:59It means to root about or delve into
0:09:04 > 0:09:08in a poem when the poem is writing itself or you are writing the poem.
0:09:08 > 0:09:13The poem kind of gets its nose
0:09:13 > 0:09:18hokes its way towards the very centre of what it's really concerned with,
0:09:21 > 0:09:25And in fact, it was the word
0:09:29 > 0:09:33an acorn and a rusted bolt.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44If I listened, an engine shunting
0:09:47 > 0:09:50Is it any wonder when I thought
0:09:50 > 0:09:52I would have second thoughts?
0:10:02 > 0:10:05and not be forced into second
0:10:05 > 0:10:10People are being brought up against different boundaries all the time.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13One person says too many cooks
0:10:13 > 0:10:17the other person says many hands
0:10:17 > 0:10:19One person says Ulster is British,
0:10:19 > 0:10:22the other person says Ulster is
0:10:24 > 0:10:27You say potato on your side of the I say "potatto" on my side.
0:10:29 > 0:10:34These contradictions are part of being a member of the human species.
0:10:35 > 0:10:40But in Northern Ireland they have taken on a special local intensity.
0:10:46 > 0:10:51It shone like gifts of the Nativity.
0:10:51 > 0:10:53When they spoke of the Mammon
0:10:58 > 0:11:09and the march drain drains banks
0:11:09 > 0:11:21that I used to hear again and again
0:11:41 > 0:11:59One farm marched another farm, one field marched another field
0:11:59 > 0:12:02to border upon and be bordered upon.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06It was a word that acknowledged
0:12:06 > 0:12:10but it also contained a definite
0:12:12 > 0:12:15If my land marched your land,
0:12:15 > 0:12:18we were bound by that boundary as well as separated by it.
0:12:46 > 0:12:50In the kitchen of the house where
0:12:50 > 0:12:54and it is one of the first memories
0:12:54 > 0:12:58I have, of my feet touching
0:12:59 > 0:13:01I must have been just two or
0:13:04 > 0:13:08I used to lean down and take the boards out of the bottom of the cot,
0:13:08 > 0:13:13and there was a terrific surprise
0:13:13 > 0:13:19small foot touched the actual cold cement, the smoothness of it.
0:13:19 > 0:13:25Then something more gradual,
0:13:29 > 0:13:32through your foot, coming into you.
0:13:32 > 0:13:37You felt confirmed within yourself just by being there on the ground.
0:13:38 > 0:13:42I'm in two places at once really,
0:13:42 > 0:13:47on the floor and within that big
0:13:47 > 0:13:50that the feel of the floor opened
0:14:00 > 0:14:04When my feet touched that floor I knew I was on my way somewhere.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07But whereto I could not have said.
0:14:08 > 0:14:16Nowadays, I would say it was
0:14:21 > 0:14:24"What is important", Basho wrote,
0:14:24 > 0:14:28in the world of true understanding
0:14:29 > 0:14:32"and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek
0:14:32 > 0:14:34"therein the truth of beauty.
0:14:36 > 0:14:53"No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget
0:14:53 > 0:14:59of Terminus, the Roman god of
0:15:21 > 0:15:25boundary that entered into me
0:15:31 > 0:15:34I used to carry a can of milk in the evenings from our house
0:15:34 > 0:15:37to a house across the fields from us.
0:15:39 > 0:15:42My journey from home to the back door of that house was short,
0:15:42 > 0:15:45no more than a few hundred yards,
0:15:45 > 0:15:50but in my imagination I covered a great distance every time.
0:16:00 > 0:16:03I still experience that old familiar
0:16:09 > 0:16:12For between the two doorsteps there were several borders.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18In fact, that whole country was
0:16:18 > 0:16:22ditches and hedges and drains.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57On my way to school, I crossed a stream, just a trickle in a
0:16:57 > 0:17:02culvert under the road that turned into this drain between the fields.
0:17:02 > 0:17:05But actually even though it looked
0:17:05 > 0:17:08it was a very important boundary. This was called the Sluggan.
0:17:10 > 0:17:12It divided first of all two
0:17:12 > 0:17:14it divided the townland of Leitrim
0:17:18 > 0:17:21It divided the townland of Tamniarn
0:17:24 > 0:17:28Then it divided two parishes,
0:17:28 > 0:17:30and the parish of Newbridge.
0:17:31 > 0:17:35It actually also divided therefore
0:17:35 > 0:17:40the diocese of Derry, running away
0:17:40 > 0:17:44on this side, and the diocese of Armagh running right down to
0:17:44 > 0:17:47Drogheda, the Boyne in the Irish Republic on the other side.
0:17:47 > 0:17:55It was also, in my own life, a division because at the age
0:17:55 > 0:17:58I used to move my loyalties across from Bellaghy to Castledawson.
0:17:58 > 0:18:01I played football for Castledawson.
0:18:01 > 0:18:09I was moving backwards and forwards across the division all the time.
0:18:44 > 0:18:48lands which were subsequently
0:18:48 > 0:18:51County of Coleraine in the period
0:18:51 > 0:18:56between the Flight of the Earls and the beginning of the Plantation.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02is the area known in the document
0:19:04 > 0:19:08There included are the names of Tamniarn, Leitrim and Shanmullagh,
0:19:08 > 0:19:14which was the old Irish name for the place we now call Castledawson.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21Two buckets were easier carried than
0:19:37 > 0:19:39When I stood on the central
0:19:39 > 0:19:42I was the last earl on horseback,
0:19:42 > 0:19:45parleying in the earshot of his
0:19:54 > 0:19:57One of the great figures of Irish history in the pre-Plantation
0:19:57 > 0:20:01period was Hugh O'Neill, Earl
0:20:01 > 0:20:06leader to hold out against the Tudor armies of Queen Elizabeth I,
0:20:06 > 0:20:10the last earl to make a stand and one of the first to suffer
0:20:10 > 0:20:14within himself the claims of two different political allegiances
0:20:14 > 0:20:18which still operate with such
0:20:23 > 0:20:27and therefore in the understanding of Queen Elizabeth, the English
0:20:27 > 0:20:32Queen's loyal representative in the
0:20:35 > 0:20:40descended from the mythic Irish leader Niall of the Nine Hostages
0:20:40 > 0:20:44and to the Irish he therefore
0:20:44 > 0:20:47leader of the Gaelic O'Neills
0:20:47 > 0:20:51as a defender of the Gaelic inquest
0:20:56 > 0:21:01of those long, drawn-out campaigns that never ceases to fascinate me.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05early in September 1599 after
0:21:05 > 0:21:23the English army up into his own
0:21:27 > 0:21:31The leader of the English forces
0:21:31 > 0:21:47in the portrait, who was the first
0:21:55 > 0:22:01and managed to draw Essex up to the River Lagan, which is a little
0:22:01 > 0:22:03tributary of the River Glyde
0:22:03 > 0:22:09He drew Essex's forces up here for a parley on the banks of the river.
0:22:09 > 0:22:13It is a famous moment often
0:22:13 > 0:22:17O'Neill on his horse in the middle of the river with the water
0:22:19 > 0:22:22behind him on the other bank his forces, Irish-speaking...
0:22:27 > 0:22:31talking to O'Neill in English,
0:22:31 > 0:22:34Everybody could see what was
0:22:34 > 0:22:39But for both the central characters, this was a mysterious moment
0:22:41 > 0:22:46if you like a frozen frame in
0:22:46 > 0:22:51O'Neill already a traitor in the eyes of Elizabeth, but Essex,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02on the verge of catastrophe really
0:23:02 > 0:23:06executed, as a matter of fact,
0:23:06 > 0:23:11because of this, very soon, and O'Neill will suffer ultimate
0:23:16 > 0:23:21For the moment, out in the middle
0:23:21 > 0:23:24The river runs, the big sky moves.
0:23:26 > 0:23:30Earl on horseback in midstream
0:23:30 > 0:23:34still parleying, in earshot of his
0:23:36 > 0:23:41in the mid-1980s when the political
0:23:41 > 0:23:44situation in Northern Ireland was totally locked and blocked.
0:23:44 > 0:23:50Maybe that is one reason why it
0:23:50 > 0:23:53The poem seems to be saying that the inheritance of a divided
0:23:56 > 0:23:59that it traps the people into
0:23:59 > 0:24:04predetermined positions and hampers all creative movement and freedom.
0:24:14 > 0:24:17Running water never disappointed.
0:24:17 > 0:24:21Crossing water always furthered
0:24:46 > 0:24:49It began with the recollection of
0:24:49 > 0:24:53neighbour said about a field of ours that marched our field
0:24:53 > 0:24:57of his and was divided from it
0:24:57 > 0:25:24Then the poem went on to play with the notion of separation, of
0:25:29 > 0:25:31Mournfully on in the kitchen
0:25:36 > 0:25:38Would the knock come to the door
0:25:38 > 0:25:42And the casual whistle strike up
0:25:51 > 0:25:57But now I stand behind him in the dark yard, in the moan of players.
0:26:02 > 0:26:07Shyly, as if he were party to lovemaking or a stranger's weeping.
0:26:09 > 0:26:14Should I slip away, I wonder, or go up and touch his shoulder
0:26:15 > 0:26:19and talk about the weather or
0:26:33 > 0:26:36when I thought The Other Side
0:26:36 > 0:26:38In the face of everything that was
0:26:38 > 0:26:42assassinations and explosions,
0:26:42 > 0:26:45I thought it was too benign and too
0:26:47 > 0:26:53But then still it struck me,
0:26:58 > 0:27:04people from whatever side have to go on living in the same old place.
0:27:06 > 0:27:12that as a symbol of the reality of our lives, the march drain is
0:27:12 > 0:27:16a better one for contemplating
0:27:16 > 0:27:22The marching season is O'Neill and Essex on either side of the river.
0:27:25 > 0:27:29of our experience embittered.
0:27:30 > 0:27:32The march drain seems to me
0:27:32 > 0:27:34to offer a way towards what
0:27:34 > 0:27:36Basho called "the world of true
0:27:51 > 0:27:57whole of the Earth instantly to be below and sustain the march drain.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01That seems to me to be something
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