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Michael D. Higgins

The poet turned President - Michael D. Higgins was elected President of the Republic of Ireland in 2011.

 

In conjunction with the ECCM Symposium 'Productivity of Culture' held in Athens, Michael D. Higgins gave a poetry reading on October 17, 2007 at Athens Centre

48, Archimidous Street116 36 Athens Greece
Tel: 210 7015242, 210 7012268

organised by the Greek-Irish Society and Hatto Fischer, Poiein kai Prattein

http://productivityofculture.org/symposium/poetry-2/

 

Michael D. Higgins is one of those unusual politicians who takes to poetry but which is not unusual for Ireland. When Seamus Heaney accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said that this came about not merely because of his own poetry, but due to three generations of Irish poets. It includes poets like Michael Longlay, Brendan Kennelly and many others.

Michael D. Higgins comes from Galway, a city akin to Gaelic as much as to the English language. That difference is of importance if European cultures are to be recognized and understood in terms of their own cultural diversities. As former Minister of Culture, Michael D. Higgins made this decision to secure the continuity of the Gaelic language by creating the institution of a Gaelic Television and Media Center to promote the language. Without such a powerful ally, there would not be this encouragement to read, to write and to speak in the Gaelic language even though between 40 to 60% of the population of Galway use it in daily communication.

The first encounter with Michael D. Higgins was during the CIED conference held in Galway 17 - 18th of October 1997. He continued from then on to upgrading CIEd in what relates to the objective of making use culture without thereby abusing it (Brendan Kennelly). Twice he came to conferences in Leipzig, the second time in June 1999 just after the bombardment of Kosovo and which prompted Michael D. Higgins there are several words no longer spoken in Europe, one of them being 'human kindness'. With his speech in Leipzig, he made possible a bridge of understanding between the rest of Europe and the Greek delegation at the conference. The latter were outraged by the bombardment and wanted to express fully their anti-Europe attitudes but which turned as well into an anti-Politician tirade of criticism. At this point, Michael D. Higgins stood up angrily and said he as a politician has every right to defend the ethics of his profession and he would not stand for this placing all the blame on all politicians for what is the state of affairs in this world.

When he came to Athens in 2000 to mark a day of culture thanks to a first invitation by Spyros Mercouris, he outlined a practical agenda as wished for, so his thoughtfulness, by Hatto Fischer. That demand still stands as he would repeat this major point during his presentation at the ECCM Symposium in the day following his poetry reading at Athens Centre, namely that the thesis developed by Rod Fisher and others in their book "In from the Margin" still stands today in a Europe hardly attentive to culture and the needs people have for authenticity in culture. Michael D. Higgins links this to 'integrity of memory'. This can be reflected in the poems which he read that evening to that very same theme of knowing immediately 'when a poem is made!'

HF 9.7.2010

 

Memory

And as Ricoeur said
'To be removed from memory
is to die twice.'
Nor should it be allowed
to make an amnesia
of violence.
An amnesty is enough
for the detail.
And who knows whether,
if in time
such a healing is possible
as would make an evening
of forgiveness
worth the going on.
We make an affirmation.
The stuff of hope beckons.
Out of the darkness
we step,
and blink into the new light.

 

The Crafting

It is the craft of delivery that has escaped us.

That knowledge poured through the senses.

Makes an accretion.

Leads to a wisdom

That is patient

In its waiting for us.

Beyond our mapmaking

And the search for coordinates,

It makes manifest

That which is waiting

For emergence.

 

The truth when it emerges

Will not be judged by categories

Of remembered sensation,

Nor yet by clever precepts.

It shall not make an obsession

Nor will it recall a scruple.

 

The sacred craft

An invocation,

Or our completeness,

A celebration,

That makes of vulnerability

A heroic journey,

Offers a resolution,

In joy.

 

We are not called to imitate.

We are the creators

Free to tell the whole story.

 

This crafting of the truth

Demands that in the task

We must reveal.

Much that is hidden,

Requires that we walk naked

Along paths of memory.

Through disappointing alleys

Of the imagination,

Comfored only

That on our journey

We are not alone.

No longer afraid

We laugh along the way.

That is our strength

revealed.

 

 

Exiles

 

No it is not the end of history.

Nor is it a possibility exhausted,

Not yet the end of ideas.

It is the time of a single idea,

Crippling, vicious and deadly,

Closing us off,

From what we imagined of a world

We have not managed to create,

Rejecting the possibility,

Of hope,

Of a better version of ourselves

 

And in the new intolerance

We may not speak of prophecy.

We may not make a criticism

Of the choices made

In our name.

The mind of war is being remade,

New demons invented,

And language gives way

To description

Of demons.

A picture is being drawn

Of those less than human who differ

An old vision of freedom

From hunger, fear, abuse,

Has faded in the terrible times.

We are invited to forget an old promise

That ours was a world to create.

 

Out of the depths we cry

We shrink in fear.

Few break the silence.

But then light flickers

In hope

In resolution

 

We must make our own answer.

Our liberation from the nightmare will come.

Our exile will end,

Not from the making of miracles

But from the strength of will and heart

Combined,

Affirming,

That we make our own history

With heart and head.

We make our common fate.

Together

We move on and recall

That old promise,

Not rejected,

Unfulfilled

 

The poems are taken from Michael D. Higgins, An Arid Season, New Island 2004

 

Voices at Evening

The company of voices at evening

Is a sweetness asserted

Against a cloying silence

Of nature,

A struggle from the chasm,

Of the sun's exit

In darkness.

Against the waiting for the light.

The giddy sounds

Make their own statement

Of humour.

The Badge of our transience,

The hope

Of our humanity

In corrected dream

And a new day.

 

Michael D. Higgins taken from An Arid Season.

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