Poetry that had to be written Authenticity: from Vultures to The Radio

July 2022 55

t an initial, superﬁcial glance these two debut

poetry collections dier wildly, from the genders

and ages of the poets – Twomey is in her twenties

while Culkeen won’t see forty again – to the fact

that Twomey’s debut is published by Gallery, until

recently considered by most who take an interest in such

matters to be the most conservative force in Irish poetry-

publishing; while Culkeen’s ‘The Boy with The Radio’ comes

from radical Tipperary-based Beir Bua Press, a dynamic new

poetry publishing outﬁt with a marked leaning towards

neo-surrealism.

Gallery published its ﬁrst book in 1970 while Beir Bua

emerged during the pandemic, publishing its ﬁrst book in

2021.

Gallery is lavishly supported by the Arts Council while Beir

Bua has, so far as I’m aware, yet to receive a cent in government

subsidy.

Publication by Gallery is often a poet’s passport to

eventually becoming an esteemed member of the poetry

establishment, once the ascendant poet has gathered

sucient mildew to be safely quoted by the likes of soon-to-be

former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

There are a number of poets on the Beir Bua list who, given

their current ideological leanings, are unlikely to be admitted

to one of those shamrock, ﬁddles, and poetry shindigs at the

White House. And yet, for all the ways in which they apparently

diverge, these two collections share perhaps the most

important quality a book of poetry can have. Both ‘Raised

Among Vultures’ and ‘The Boy with The Radio’ brim with

poetry that clearly had to be written. The voices in both are

striking for their authenticity, a rare enough quality in the Irish

poetry world where, in these days of accelerated networking,

authenticity is often thinner on the ground than it would be at

a convention of auctioneers basking in an address by Bertie

Ahern.

Both Twomey and Culkeen are the real thing, and had to

write these poems. There is no posing from either of them.

Twomey’s poems are a matter of life and death. She has

Poetry that had

to be written

Authenticity:

from Vultures to

The Radio

‘Raised Among Vultures’ by Molly

Twomey (The Gallery Press 75pp

€12.95), and ‘The Boy with The Radio’

by Cormac Culkeen (Beir Bua Press

44pp €8.90)

Reviewed by Kevin Higgins

spoken, and written, of her profound struggle with an eating

disorder while she was a student at NUI Galway. These poems,

in several of which Twomey confronts and bears stylish

witness to her worst days, are a vital conﬁrmation that in her

case the life force won out. In ‘Everyone Here Is Dead Honest’

she writes: “We stay up all night, / ﬂossing with each other’s

veins. / Who knew there were so many ways to die?”.

The poem concludes: “I don’t want to wake up / and weigh

a cup of kale twenty-seven times, / water down my slimline”.

In the startlingly honest “I did not eat for three weeks” the

narrator puts the disorder down to, among many other things,

the fact “even the driving instructor stood me up” and

“because I was not old enough to vote but wanted change”.

In ‘Notebook’ Twomey shows an empathy rare in one her

age for someone wrestling with a dierent variety of addictive

behaviour (heroin, in this case). Her empathy is also profound

in the poems she writes about her mother, father, and brother;

‘Zipping Up My Mother’s Dress’ is just gorgeous. While in

‘Dead Ends’ she displays a savage truthfulness which has

more in common with Baudelaire at his most shocking than

with most recent Irish poems you’ll read .

Cormac Culkeen’s ‘The Boy with The Radio’ also reeks of

rare authenticity. His poems are littered with stained mugs

and ﬂoorboards covered only with old copies of the Tuam

Herald newspaper.

In ‘Hermit’ the poem’s subject responds to a knock on the

door “Like a mouse in open grass / Beneath a hawk’s shadow”.

Culkeen directs an interrogating light on places and people

contemporary Ireland generally likes to omit from its ocial

version of itself, now that we’re a Modern European

Democracy, whatever that means. Not very much to some

people in the interior, Culkeen’s poems imply.

In ‘The Local’ he writes of a once essential but now defunct

public house where these days: “A dartboard with its last

markers catches a stripe of headlamps”.

A plain-speaking neo-surrealist in the manner of cult

American writer Richard Brautigan has arisen from the rarely

written of townlands of north county Galway.

The publication of Culkeen’s ﬁrst collection of poetry is a

cause for celebration. He is gloriously ﬂexible when it comes

to poetic form. The title prose-poem ‘The Boy with The Radio’

is a classic; should the world still exist a century from now

people will read it and know what it was like to live in pre-

internet north County Galway.

If I ever become Minister for Justice, Culkeen’s poems will

be gently force-fed to Leinster rugby fans in the Cafes of

Sandymount and Booterstown as part of their cultural

re-education.

TICKETLESS

Twomey’s

poems are a

matter of life

and death.

Culkeen directs

an interrogating

light on places

and people

contemporary

Ireland

generally likes

to omit

Keep your eye on the poet