Mebdh McGuckian
Medbh was born in Belfast in 1950 and educated at a Dominican
convent and Queen’s University. She has worked as a teacher and
editor and was Writer in Residence at Queen’s University for
several years. An acclaimed poet and writer, she has published
several anthologies of poetry since her first publications in 1980,
‘Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems’ and ‘Portrait of Joanna’. Her first
major collection, ‘The Flower Master’ (1982), which explores
post-natal breakdown, was awarded a Rooney prize for Irish
Literature. Among other awards she won the 1989 Cheltenham Prize
for her collection, ‘On Ballycastle Beach’. Her latest collection
is ‘The Book of the Angel’.
They were filming in
our area the other day; a true World War Two story, starring
Shirley Maclaine, about an American plane that crashed into the
Cave Hill, and they found the pilot’s ring. I bumped into three
uniformed heroes and a permed, short-skirted officer out of the
1940’s. They were filming here because some trees and windows and
corners have not changed since Victorian times, never mind the
Blitz. Despite the nearby rumble of the motorway there is an air of
old-fashioned peace.
Because of the 30-year
Troubles we are less built-up than other major cities. You still
hear birdsong here, as I am told you no longer can in Manchester.
At night from Belfast Castle, where I have been recently practising
endless three-point turns and left-hand reverses for driving tests,
the sense of a warm and vibrant community life in the lights below
is widespread and consoling. At dawn, the massive ferries arriving
and departing regally cleave Belfast Lough and bring with them a
steady awareness of connection to the outside world and its
commerce.
My Belfast is timeless,
though the tobacco factory at Gallahers has become a leisure centre
and the Capitol cinema where we held sticky hands is now a Tesco
store. I rejoice that poets like Helen Waddell and Eithne Carbery
walked here, while Leontia Flynn now dwells, however precariously,
in a terrace house with an unexpected backyard, infamous as the
scene of a gothic murder that everyone remembers and someone has
just made into a book.