I’m trying to write some new material, which was kicked off from a discussion in my local writing group a few months ago. Our group were lucky to be joined by Pat Parks, an American professor, who worked with us on a project inspired by W. B. Yeats. On our first session, Pat simply asked us what it really means to be Irish. From his perspective, an American impression of being Irish is what most Irish people would expect Americans to think: green fields and all that stuff. Pat was interested in the Irish men and women of today as opposed to Yeats’ Irish people in his poem Under Ben Bulben: the indomitable Irishry.
Since then, I’ve been trying to get into the psyche of the typical 21st century Irishmen and how they tick. How have men adjusted to what is now expected of them from society? Some would say many of us have become feminised while others have become hyper-alpha-masculine with aggression being paramount to this. One thing is certain, being male is not as simple as it once was insofar as I am sure it is the same for females. However, if we think of the stereotype Irish male, what do we see and do we really see him in 2016?
That’s the challenge I am setting myself for a while and I’ll be reading some of these poems tomorrow night in Visual, Carlow with the Carlow Writers’ Cooperative.