Academics’ acclaim for ‘lyrical brilliance’ of singer Tommy Makem’s ‘outsider poet’ nephew
A POET and philosopher has published a unique new collection of poems which explores the instincts that drive human behaviour – and he’s giving away half of his latest volume for free online so that people can decide on merit if they want to pay for the rest.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, Peter Makem – who is a former Ulster Championship-winning GAA manager and a nephew of the legendary folk singer Tommy – said: ‘My poetry goes through all the normal natural things: Why do musicians get together to play traditional music? Why do people sing songs? Why do people fall in love? Why do people declare war? Why is there conflict and not reason?’
The 77 year old, who has studied philosophy, continued: ‘I had this totally new, fresh thing that we are all in a way possessed by something beyond us, and I described that “beyond us”.’
The new book, called The Tribe of Earth, has at its foundation Makem’s own ‘philosophical position regarding the mystical’.
‘Psychologists talk about the dominant human drive – Jung and Freud and all these people. And in my philosophy, the dominant human drive is what I call the possession of being.’
It’s been 20 years since Peter published his third poetry book.
But for the last five years the former journalist from Derrynoose, Co. Armagh, has been perfecting a new collection of poems he says is ‘totally different from any other themes’ explored by other poets in the English language.
‘It deals with this wide range of events and instincts and things that had never been worked out before that I could see anywhere, certainly in English poetry,’ he said.
His new collection has received some notable critical acclaim.
Declan McDaid, who is the retired head of English at St Colman’s College in Newry, where Peter now lives, has studied the new work and called it ‘one of the greatest of all Irish collections of poetry, of a lyrical brilliance’. He called a series of sonnets within the four-part collection ‘a colossal achievement’.
Professor Christopher Morash, who is the inaugural Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin, described Makem’s work as ‘outsider art’, which is ‘doubly outside the mainstream’.
He said of Makem’s work: ‘There are poets who are very much a part of it [the mainstream], in terms of taking part in workshops, festivals, and publishing in places like Poetry Ireland; and beyond that, someone making their own way, simply writing and publishing on their own, tends not to be part of the conversation,’ Prof Morash told the MoS.
‘Makem is not someone who has made a place for himself in that world, and, at the same time, many of his poems I have looked at are more philosophical than would be the norm for poets who might earn a strong local following.’
‘The idea of an artist working away at a substantial body of work without any much reference to what their contemporaries are doing can produce some very unexpected results.’
Peter said he hopes to ‘pole vault’ over the usual channels for getting poetry noticed by giving half straight to the reader for free.
‘My thought is to put out the challenge and let the people decide,’ he said.
The father-of-two said his lyrical poetry was influenced by ‘the song tradition’. From a well-known musical family, his grandmother Sarah Makem was a famous trad singer and he is a nephew of Tommy Makem – the singer, musician and songwriter who, together with the Clancy Brothers, brought Irish folk music to the masses in the USA in the 1960s.
‘They were talked about as the most famous Irish men in the world at that time, with the Aran sweaters and all that,’ Peter said. The four musicians popularised the heavy woollen jumpers long before Taylor Swift, sporting them from their first TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961.
Tommy would call his nephew a couple of times a month in those days, Peter recalled, more likely to report that he had bumped into someone from the towns and villages around his home town of Keady than another celebrity.
Bob Dylan was a friend and has spoken at length of Makem and the Clancys’ strong influence on his own style and songwriting.
‘When they were in New York in the early 60s, Dylan was going around with them everywhere they went and taking down songs,’ Peter told the MoS.
One of those songs had first been learned from the Keady woman Mary Toner, and Peter was alongside his uncle when Ms Toner learned of Dylan’s appreciation.
‘Tommy told her: “I was talking to Bob Dylan a while ago and of all the songs that we brought over, I think the one that he liked best was your version of…” – whatever the song was, I’ve forgotten – “I said to myself, if I ever see Mary Toner I’ll pass on the compliment.”
‘And she says, “That’s very nice of you. That’s very thoughtful. Bob Dylan – is he one of the Dylans on Chapel Street?”
‘He’s giving away half for free online’
‘Dylan was going around with them everywhere’
Tommy came home regularly and continued to participate in family music sessions, treating loved ones to his new compositions such as the classic ballad Four Green Fields.
Peter became involved with Armagh GAA in the mid-70s, helping to regenerate a team that had fallen into disarray to such an extent that matchday spectators had to be drafted in to field a team for one league game.
Inspired by the approach of his successful neighbours in Co. Down, Peter ‘spent the summer of 1974 going round all the prospective footballers’ hoping to convince them to buy into a new system.
‘Armagh never even trained before that,’ he said.
By 1982 he was managing the team and won an Ulster title before losing to Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final.
■ Read the first half of The Tribe of Earth at petermakem.co.uk