Ten days ago, under a full moon, I arrived at Belfast’s American Bar in Dock Street. The joint was jumping, but I was destined for a quieter room on the top floor where I first learned of May Morton. This lady, who died in 1957, was a teacher, vice-principal of the Girls’ Model School in the city, a literary activist and a poet.
The chances are you’ve never heard of May, and she would have remained in obscurity if it wasn’t for Dr Liz McManus, who searched among the male literary figures of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s to find a woman writer.
“I discovered a fascinating woman, an important woman,” she told me, before reading from the book she has edited: May Morton: Phantom Poet — a title taken from May’s final poem The Rope: “A phantom rope, a shadow on the gray / moored fast to nothingness” — a ghostly image that could be a metaphor for May’s own life and death.
Dr Liz McManus is a novelist and short story writer; her awards are many and varied. In 1992 she was elected to Dáil Éireann and served as Minister of State for Housing and Urban Renewal from 1994 until 1997.
As a long-time campaigner for women’s rights, she has made her mark on society, and she admires May Morton and her determination to champion women writers through her work for PEN, an organisation promoting Irish literature both nationally and internationally.
The chances are you’ve never heard of May, and she would have remained in obscurity if it wasn’t for Dr Liz McManus
— Anne Hailes
In 1951, the poem Spindle and Shuttle brought May to prominence when it won the Festival of Britain Northern Ireland poetry prize. She wrote a hugely evocative piece about the linen industry and the mill workers; reviewers said the poem had “remarkable qualities, original in design, a sustained effort, breathing the spirit of our Province.” This is only a small example from the work:
“Darning, dreaming, /Thinking long, /Flax and flux and wheel and song: /Good and evil, / Right from wrong. /Spend and lend and buy and borrow, /Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow; /Weaving linen, / Spinning thread /Weaving guns and spinning bread; /Sheets and shrouds / And shirts and collars /Earning dollars, dollars, dollars.”
A comment on capitalism set against the rhythm of the backbreaking work of the Belfast mill girls. The winning verse no doubt pleased many, as this poem surpassed another entrant — the Ulster Poet Laureate John Hewitt.
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The book contains over 60 poems, plus a detailed résumé of this poet’s life and times. Published by Arlen House, available on Amazon.
The wind was whipping up when Dreams: An Anthology was launched at the Linen Hall Library on Tuesday. Published by Faerie Press, this is an important collection of poems and essays “dedicated to all LGBTQ+ far and wide. The world may feel dark, but from darkness dreams draw their strength.”
The pages are filled with work by young people from across the UK and Ireland. Aged between 16 and 25, they tell their intimate thoughts through dreams and through their talent for putting words on paper.
Split into three sections — Dusk, Midnight and Dawn — I particularly liked Hope in a Haircut. I’ve a fellow feeling. Once, I had long plaits I hated, so I saved my pocket money, said nothing, went to the barber and asked for a short back and sides. “Not without your mother’s permission.” “My mother sent me.” (Lie.) “OK.” I returned home with my plaits in a brown paper bag.
Kirstie McIvor’s subject also wants rid of her long hair. At 13 years old, Rua dreamt of this day in the hairdresser’s and, when staring into the mirror and seeing the new person she had become, “there was a burst of sunlight inside her chest, warmth and comforting… she could nearly contain her joy.”
But she hadn’t reckoned on the reaction of her schoolmates. She suffered ridicule; they refused to consider their friend was one of “those”. In this dream she meets her future self, who tells her not to be afraid to be a butch: “I promise we all turn out just fine.” Rua woke up and knew two things: she was a butch, and she was going to be loved.
In Dream Sequences, Kiri Winer writes: “I used to dream of my teeth dropping from my gums… but then I dream of you, / like an umbrella in the storm / I am protected out of the blue, / even where you are out of form.” Blake Harrup Dack contributes a frightening short story of two witches, Citress and Rubi, and the Fruit Trees in the heart of the woods — a complex, deep and fascinating tale.
This anthology is hard to put down, full of variety, innermost thoughts, and the hopes and fears of young people — and the power of dreaming.
More information from Linen Hall Library: 028 9032 1707.