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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
K
EVIN Barrington has lived dangerously.
He spent most of the s working
as a freelance war correspondent in
Cambodia, for the UN in the Congo
and the Ivory Coast before a love interest took
him to Hollywood and a job in the advertising
industry. Now back in Dublin – a place he finds
far too small and incestuous, but a safe haven -
he’s learnt when he needs to take cover.
Kevin is a wounded greyhound. He is fight-
ing illness and has been undergoing harrowing
medical treatment for the last year. Finding
himself temporarily unable to travel abroad, he
now escapes, by blogging and writing poetry, to
a place where he finds he can run free and fast.
He recently ran in to some trouble with the ridic-
ulous Declan Ganley who sued after Barrington
had conducted a long-term campaign question-
ing his honesty and mandate. Barrington was
divested of a nominal sum in one of the first cases
of defamatory tweetings.
He describes himself as a reporter and his
poems as a medium for reporting the internal-
ised human condition. There are stories of love,
art, addiction, illness, friendship and politics
in this collection of fifteen poems. He calls each
poem a circus act with an edge and he is the ring-
master. He plays with language and his poems
are crafted for oral impact, with the punch of
an expert copywriter and wordsmith. There’s
an awkward, anarchic brilliance here, filtered
through his characteristic unfailingly-friendly
‘come hear ‘til I tell you’ nature.
This book is dedicated to Kevin’s sister
Eileen who he describes as a “dote’’. Eileen and
her family provide Kevin with the space, shelter
and peace he needs while he is replenishing his
energy before getting back into the field. His
young niece and nephew have influenced the
playful tone of many of his poems. Kevin’s own
intellectual agility was nurtured early, growing
up in Monkstown in an environment of challeng-
ing sibling ‘intellectual sparring’. There is no end
to the achievements of his family; and no space
to go into them.
Kevin’s philosophy is simple: it’s about
respect. He believes in taking no more than
your fair share from this planet and society.
Capitalism he says once had its place, now it is
the very few destroying the planet for the many.
He says that what we dismiss as inefficiencies,
like once waiting three years for a telephone to
be installed, did perhaps actually spread real
gain to others. He says it is time for assertive-
ness with current forms of commerce. It is not
good enough to be promised jobs as a short-term
gain when the cost to the future is too high:
“What is the price to social services when the
Irish government permits a % corporate tax
to be paid in exchange for a handful of jobs? Our
politicians are too impressed by the Googles and
Apples of this world. Johnny public is not win-
ning. These companies are all about image. We
need to use their image against them and shame
them into paying their fair share of tax’’.
The title poem of this volume is central to
Kevin’s political position and vision. He loves
the internet “Cos it’s ours’’. He wrote this
poem in response to the recent Oireachtas
Communications committee session on Social
Media which he says was a “witch-burning ses-
sion”. His view is “stifle the internet and you
stifle the only means of defence there is left’’.
Barrington says control of social media is an
attempt to disenable dissent and the freedom
made possible by telecommunications. He rec-
ognises that social media are open to the type
of abuse and “bawdy bullshit’’ that is inherent
in human nature, acknowledging that ‘’Twitter
lends itself to abuse like the telephone lends
itself to gossip’’.
The Internet is a thing of beauty and won-
der – it is journalism by the people for the people.
He talks about the Internet at its best being a
form of “journalistic rugby”, where a story is
skilfully and gracefully passed and spun from
one writer to the next as natural momentum
advances knowledge and wisdom.
The digital revolution is the Great Leveller -
with the capacity to invert democracy and the
vertical structure of society by making “access to
knowledge horizontal”. He refers to the leader-
less Occupy movement as part of the same global
movement of levelling.
The book itself is a manifestation of
Barrington’s idealism and vision. Many of the
edgy contemporary illustrations were com-
missioned for his poems. The transnational
publication team and illustrators were “crowd
sourced” through ‘Political World’ online dis-
cussion forum.
President Hoover commented of America
during the height of the Depression: “What this
country really needs is a great poem. Something
to lift people out of fear and selfishness”. Ireland
is in desperate need of an original and inspiring
poem right now and Kevin Barrington could be
the one writing it.
‘I love the Internet’ by Kevin Barrington can be
bought online with an audio option for €5 @ www.
itsapoeticalworld.com.
Kevin Barrington will give a reading of his poetry at
the Dalkey Book Festival on Saturday 15th June from
17.00- 17.45 at the Corner Note Café:
www.dalkeybookfestival.com
media
Barrington unbarred
Nicola Carroll interviews Kevin Barrington about
his new e-book ‘I love the Internet’
“
There’s an awkward,
anarchic brilliance here,
ltered through his
characteristic unfailingly-
friendly come hear ‘til I tell
you nature
