Dingle poet Tim Hanafin on the cultural ties between Ireland’s west coast and Australia
Merry Chrissy as we love say here Down Under to you all my wonderful Streets of Your Towners!
I’m writing this to you today while indulging in one of the great Australian Christmas traditions—watching the Boxing Day cricket test! All after playing a bit of post-Christmas-feast cricket with mates yesterday on Christmas Day. That and the mango I had for breakfast and I feel like I’m enjoying all the great summery goodness that Christmas in Australia has to offer.
And here’s your Christmas pressie from the Wandering Journo! Take some time out from the Chrissy festivities and travel with me to Dingle, on the wild west coast of Ireland, to listen to Tim Hanafin recite some of the poetry he is renowned for, as the celebrated reciter for the district.
Every time I listen to this I feel my heart beat slow down, and I imagine that cosy fire at Foley’s Bar overlooking Inch Beach and my life slows down for just a short while. I hope you can experience that too.
For this episode of Streets of Your Town, wander with me to County Kerry in Ireland, to discover how close Australian and Irish cultural traditions are despite being on opposite sides of the world.
Tim Hanafin is known throughout the Dingle Peninsula on Ireland’s west coast as the man who recites poetry from a deep well of decades of learning, with a poem appropriate for every event, whether it be wedding, funeral or spontaneous celebration.
He says it’s vital that these poems are spoken orally and not only read in books if we are to keep them alive.
“I’ve been doing it for years. We had a local drama group and we’d go out to visiting different areas, and you’d have to fill the intervals. And somebody told me one night to go out and do a recitation and that’s how it started,” Tim says.
“I do a lot of stuff from a man Sigerson Clifford, that’s his name, very Irish name Sigerson Clifford, he wrote loads of stuff and you might’ve noticed I had a poem about the tinkers. They’re travellers. They have their own culture and he wrote a lot about them because he understood them and he understood their lives that they’ve been misunderstood and they have, their lifespan is shorter than the settled people.
“It’s very important, and I love doing it here. And it’s places like this, people like yourself who come and show appreciation and that’s what keeps it going. And I love doing it.”
Tim Hanafin has lived in County Kerry all of his 85 years. He now lives in a tiny village called Inch, known by many as the location where the epic Oscar-winning movie Ryan’s Daughter was filmed, putting County Kerry on the tourist trail in the 1970s.
When I speak to him in front of a cosy fire at Foley’s Bar overlooking the miles of sand dunes constantly evolving on Inch Beach, it doesn’t take long for the Australian influence on this far-flung county to appear from his extensive back catalogue of poetry.
“I have a book of poems written by John O’Brien. His real name was Father Patrick Hartigan, and he was known as the Poet Laureate of the Irish in Australia at the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote loads of stuff. I do recitals of that. It’s lovely stuff.”
The first poem Tim recites for Streets of Your Town listeners to enjoy, is Calling to Me, by John O’Brien.
"Through the hush of my heart in the spell of its dreaming Comes the song of a bush boy glad-hearted and free; Oh, the gullies are green where the sunlight is streaming, And the voice of that youngster is calling to me. It is calling to me with a haunting insistence, And my feet wander off on a hoof-beaten track, Till I hear the old magpies away in the distance With a song of the morning that’s calling me back. It is calling me back, for the dew’s on the clover, And the colours are mellow on mountain and tree: Oh, the gold has gone grey in the heart of the rover, And the bush in the sunshine is calling to me. It is calling to me, though the breezes are telling Gay troubadour tales to the stars as they roam; For the tapers are lit in the humble old dwelling, And the love that it sheltered is calling me home. It is calling me home — but the white road lies gleaming, And afar from it all must I tarry and dree; Just an echo far off, in the hush of my dreaming, Is the voice of a youngster that’s calling to me.”
He says the affinity the Irish have with Australians goes back to the days of British rule, and continues to be expressed to this day.
“Of course we have an affinity with Australia all right because you know in the old days and the British rule, if you committed any crime you were sent to Van Dieman’s Land. Which is now Tasmania,” he says.
“Small petty grievances. They were sent out because under the English rule, that’s what they did. They sent you out to Van Dieman’s Land and they did all right there.”
He looks back on the decades he has spent living in County Kerry, and says so much has changed in this isolated pocket of the world on Ireland’s wild west coast.
“It’s a different world completely. Totally different world,” he says.
“My favourite poet, Patrick Kavanagh, the countryman’s poet, says it takes a whole lifetime to get to know one small field. That’s what he said, because there’s there’s so many interesting things that are changing in the seasons.
“We used to play handball on the roadside, up against the gate of of a house, and a car would only come every half an hour or so. Now we can’t go out in the road with traffic.
“That’s the world of today yeah. It’s a complete change of pace and materialistic because people they want more money and find more expectations out of life.”
Clarion finalist!
Thanks to you all my Streets of Your Town supporters! My best Chrissy pressie would be you sharing this newsletter with even just one of your mates, or encouraging them to follow Streets of Your Town podcast on their favourite podcast provider (Apple podcasts Spotify etc). It’s because of you that I am able to continue bringing you stories of amazing Australians from all around the world capturing an audio slice of the spirit of this time. And it’s because of you that I was nominated for a Clarion Award recently—Queensland’s media awards. I was a finalist in the Best Audio (Radio Documentary and Podcast) category. While I didn’t win I’m immensely proud of what you all enable me to do as an indie podcaster. I was the only freelancer in the finalists!
But truth be told…the best Chrissy pressie I’ve received came a couple of days ago when I had an early Chrissy celebration with my brother Ashley. Many of you would remember my post about Ashley in the newsletter years ago when he was recovering from a fall and subsequent hip surgery. Seeing Ashley so content and happy after all he’s been through—he’s the bravest man I know. That newsletter is still my most popular post that I have shared—from more than 120 episodes. I think it was shared more than 800 times! I thought you’d like to see how happy he is now.
Hope you get to enjoy all the wonders of Chrissy, wherever you are! My gratitude to you, my ever-supportive tribe, overflows.
xx Nance The Wandering Journo