The farmer poet’s ode to County Mayo

MAYO poet Terry McDonagh has lived much of his life in Hamburg, Germany. Nevertheless his source of inspiration is his home at Cill Aodain, near Kiltimagh, a birthplace he shares with the great 19th-Century poet Antaine Ó Reachtabhra (Raifteirí).

Most of us with an Irish schooling will know by heart the opening lines of Raifteirí’s poem, ‘Cill Aodain’. It was written as an homage to his native place after he took to the roads of south Galway following his involvement in an incident with a ‘borrowed’ horse. The poem speaks of his longing for his home turf:

Anois teacht an Earraigh beidh an lá ag dul chun síneadh

Is tar éis na Féile Bríde árdóidh me mo sheol. Go Coillte Mach rachad Ní stopfaidh me choice Go seasfaidh me síos I lár Chondae Mhaigh Eo.

McDonagh is profoundly conscious of his connections with Raifteirí.

“My great-grandfather, Thady Conlon was a hedge- school teacher and translated the poem from the Irish for Douglas Hyde. My brother currently owns the field where Raifteirí was born.”

The love for words and language remained in the family.

“My uncle Tim used to take us walking up to Lios Árd, the magical place mentioned in the poem. He told us about the faeries who gave Raifteirí his gift of poetry and talked about the old traditions. He gave me a sense of the power of the place I am from.”

As a poet Terry believes he is carrying on the tradition of word and story and language.

“In every family there is someone whose job it is to carry the family skill, be it carpentry, ironmongery, farming or whatever. I suppose I am the one to carry the words.”

Terry was brought up on a small farm in Cill Aodain. “My father was a great innovator, we had apples, tomatoes, various fruits and we also had the first milking machine in the area.”

The abundance and variety on the McDonagh farm reflects the picture painted by Raifteirí 150 years previously when he described the bounteous nature of his locality. Cill Aodáin an baile a bhfásann gach ní ann, Tá sméara is subh craobh ann is meas de gach sórt,

Cill Aodáin is the town where everything grows there are blackberries and raspberries there and every sort of fruit

As a young man in the 1960s Terry worked hard on the farm but also found time for football. However, the two didn’t always mix well. “I got a trial for the Mayo minors but I had spent the day of the trial behind a horse, harrowing. By the time I got to the pitch in the evening I wasn’t worth much, so that ended my inter-county football career.”

Returning to the words and stories he got a different perspective from his mother’s side. She was the daughter of an RIC man who moved to Belfast after the War of Independence.

McDonagh’s career journey has seen him try his hand at an eclectic range of jobs. After secondary school, like many young men of his generation he spent a few years in a seminary, in his case with the Columban Missionaries in Dalgan, Co Meath. Leaving the path to the cloth behind he worked as a truck driver and a van salesman in and around Galway.

It was during this time, in the mid-1970s, he came across pub theatre and Druid Theatre Company.

“I used to go for my lunch to a pub where Druid performed and I got to know Mick Lally, Marie Mullen, Garry Hynes and the others. I’d give them a hand with their props, with setting up and cleaning up. I eventually got parts in some of their productions. I had an instinct for it and the experience gave me a thirst for drama and language. I went back to college and studied English and sociology.”

Terry’s wanderings led him eventually to Hamburg where he became immersed in the arts and drama ending up as drama director at the International School in Hamburg for 16 years, between the mid-1980s and the mid-noughties.

“Along with teaching I performed in Hamburg, and toured with groups to places as far away as Australia.”

Meanwhile, he continued to write and published his first book of poetry, The Road Out in 1991. In 2007 he left the drama school and took up writing full time.

“I met my wife at the International School and she was happy to hold down the ‘real job’ while I followed my writing dream.”

The dream took him to Indonesia and to Melbourne as a writer in residence and also brought him back to Ireland where he did residencies in Coole Park and worked with well-known writer and broadcaster, John Quinn. He now divides his time between Kiltimagh and Hamburg.

The tension between home and away peppers his work. At the conclusion of his collection Cill Aodáin & Nowhere Else, McDonagh writes: “It has been said that, as an adult, you can never, fully, return to the home where you were born and grew up, nor can you ever truly leave that home… Once we have set out we can never again find the exact footprint to step neatly back into… There is nothing for it but to continue piecing together special moments that allow themselves to be pieced.”

I GOT A TRIAL FOR THE MAYO MINORS BUT I HAD SPENT THE DAY OF THE TRIAL BEHIND A HORSE, HARROWING... I WASN’T WORTH MUCH THAT DAY