Life

Anne Hailes: Remembering Al Logan and seeking sanctuary in poetry

Anne Hailes

Anne Hailes

Anne is Northern Ireland's first lady of journalism, having worked in the media since she joined Ulster Television when she was 17. Her columns have been entertaining and informing Irish News readers for 25 years.

Al Logan will be remembered for his velvety smooth singing voice and his positive attitude to life
Al Logan will be remembered for his velvety smooth singing voice and his positive attitude to life Al Logan will be remembered for his velvety smooth singing voice and his positive attitude to life

OCTOBER 31 in 1959 was a Saturday, Halloween and a very special day. Ulster Television went on air that afternoon and, as they say, the rest is history.

I worked there from day one and what an education it was to a teenager who had been asked to leave school as she was taking up space. We met the great and the good and the home-grown talent was exceptional.

Sadly, through the years the names have appeared in obituaries rather than on screen.

Most recent of these is Al Logan, a man I admired not only for his velvety smooth singing voice but for his attitude towards life, he had a great smile and a word for everyone and he was always welcomed into the studio.

He had a successful career in America as well as Ireland but he was modest and let his voice do the talking and his many records will ensure that voice will be around for a long time.

Until a couple of weeks ago he had been in hospital; he'd had heart problems, but wanted to be in his own home where he was happy surrounded by family and friends.

His son Martin was with him the night he died. Al was comfortable in his chair watching football and they said goodnight, with Martin saying, "We'll talk in the morning."

Sadly the morning never came. Al was 87 and many of those were golden years in the entertainment business where he was loved and respected. As someone said he could sing the phone book, but for me Our Lady of Knock will always bring Al Logan to mind - he sang it with such grace.

With sympathies to his four children and nine grandchildren.

FINDING SANCTUARY

I was sent a book of poems recently and it gave me an idea.

Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere is a collection of verse compiled by Belfast woman Angela Graham, who divides her time between here and her home in Wales.

She invited five fellow poets to contribute, with each bringing their individual meaning of 'sanctuary'. This gives rise to a volume of very diverse work which cannot be read and dismissed at one sitting; re-reading affords more depth, often disturbing.

"In designing the collection I wanted it to embody the hosting aspect of sanctuary, so I looked for two poets in Wales and two in Northern Ireland, who have expertise in some aspect of sanctuary," says Angela.

"In Northern Ireland I found Csilla Toldy, a film-maker and writer who fled Communist Hungary for life in the 'free' West, and Viviana Fiorentino, an economic migrant from Italy, a novelist, poet and academic who campaigns on behalf of prisoners of conscience and migrants.

"In Wales I found Phil Cope, an expert on the holy places of the British Isles and Magyar, an Iranian now living in Wales. And my mentor Glen Wilson from Portadown."

Angela contributes a fine poem of her own about migration.

LIVING IN FEAR

Her contribution, A Teenage Catholic Safety Expert, Protestant East Belfast tells of the house in the "...first full summer 1971/ but already Death has visited".

Angela describes the interior, the vulnerability of the design, picture windows, the downstairs, the upstairs and the stairs themselves with the flimsy newel post, a symbol of safety. "Nothing can reach you here/but the shouts of children playing in the street,/so calibrate each call and cry/and hope that none goes past/the reckoning point/and if they stone the house/know this is the one safe spot."

Angela is a distinguished television producer in Wales, a short story writer and a poet who left Northern Ireland in 1981.

"I had allowed myself to think of Wales, and the UK, only as the goal of sanctuary-seekers, as 'receiving' nations who provide refuge," she explains.

"I have come to understand that we are all seekers of sanctuary. The world looks different from that perspective. Sanctuary is a human need."

THE MANY MEANINGS OF SANCTUARY

We are used to physical sanctuaries, acceptance of someone needing protection for some reason but there is also the emotional need and the spiritual joy of finding a place of safety, a sacred place within someone else's life and being someone who will accept you for who you are.

The poems reflect all these, from east Belfast to Ukraine and from Kabul back to Antrim.

Angela Graham writes in the first verse of her poem Home:

"As I spoke, I realised that he was listening,

that he had opened up some room inside himself

and there was the hallway beckoning me

towards a door, giving onto a sunlit living space

that I could enter, my burden in my arms,

and when I'd placed it on his table

we would, together, loosen its bonds,

consider it... quietly."

Having read how Angela's book came about, I decided to invite six friends to write me a poem for Christmas.

They seemed glad to be challenged although not absolutely sure if they could actually come up with the goods.

Angela's friends certainly did and their insights make for most thought-provoking reading.

:: Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere is published by Seren, £9.99. Serenbooks.com

WORLD PREMIERE FOR BELFAST

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday (November 3-5) as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival, Jane Coyle's work After Melissa will be premiered at the Brian Friel Theatre at Queen's University Belfast.

It is inspired by The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, set in the exotic Egyptian city of Alexandria, and presents the same sequence of events through several perspectives.

Its tangle of human relationships is narrated by Donegal man, Eamon Quiery, a shadowy figure and a penniless Irish writer.

With him is a silent orphaned child, the daughter of a nightclub dancer named Melissa, his former lover. A multi-cultural cast includes Belfast-based actor Ruairi Conaghan, Caitriona Hinds, Sanja Novi?, Fadl Mustapha and Emily Bagnall.

Details, including information about the NI tour of After Melissa, at powerstonefilms.com