Ulster poetry speaks with rhyme and reason

Listen to the American poet Dana Gioia, and he’ll tell you there’s something special about Northern Ireland.”There’s prob- ably no other place in the English-speaking world over the last half century with such a density of poetic talent as Belfast,” says Mr. Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Something remarkable happened there. Poets in Northern Ireland fulfilled their ancient role of speaking for the people with a wisdom and clarity not found in other public speech.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Washingtonians will have the luck to meet two generations of contemporary poets of Northern Ireland, in what the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon has called a “jamboree” of readings and reflections, at a two-day symposium at Georgetown University and at an evening of readings at the National Geographic Society, which Mr. Gioia will introduce.

It’s all part of the Rediscover Northern Ireland Festival, which peaks with the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival in June and July and runs through August.

Along with the poetry, there will be concerts, literary events, art and craft shows, movies and theatrical performances. More than 40 cultural and arts events will showcase the diversity of today’s Northern Ireland.

The wee place of just 1.7 million people is poised to take Washington, if not by storm, then by sonnet, song and story.

“We’re invading,” says Philip Hammond, creative director of Rediscover Northern Ireland. “We want to show as wide as possible a range of Northern Ireland as it now is.”

The necessary poets

The timing of this festival could not be better. Northern Ireland “as it now is” is at a unique juncture. It’s on the verge of not just true peace between sectarian factions that waged bloody war in the province for some 30 years, but of shared power and joint governance by those same factions — wary of each other yet weary too, and willing to talk instead of shoot.

Perhaps it’s no wonder: During the Troubles, as that time is so understatedly called, more than 3,500 people died.

But despite those three decades of violence and uncertainty, the poets of Northern Ireland seem to do their craft better than just about anyone else.

“Northern Ireland has produced more than its fair share of poets,” says Mr. Hammond of Rediscover Northern Ireland.

“The last half of the 20th century saw a huge revival, with poets who are still writing today, like Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon, who are considered icons of Northern Irish poetry.”

But Northern Ireland’s history, with its stories of the clash of Protestants and Catholics, British and Irish, Scots-Irish and Anglo-Irish, is never far from sight or mind.

“When a society is in crisis, one of the things that happens is that those who are most inclined to be introspective, are,” says Robert Mahony, professor of English at Catholic University, who teaches a seminar about contemporary Irish society as part of the Irish Studies Program there.

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