A newly published book of lyrical poems ‘The Tribe of Earth’ by Newry man Peter Makem has been described as one of the greatest of all Irish collections of poetry, of a lyrical brilliance uncommon in modern poetry.
Retired head of English at St Colman’s College Declan Mc Daid who studied the new work asserted that in breadth and depth of content it was equally as accomplished as that of the great Irish writers who have left their mark on our national consciousness such as Yeats and Heaney. He described a series of sonnets within the work as ‘a colossal achievement’, that the scope in historical, thematic and poetic reach was quite breath-taking and brought back memories of the sonnets of GM Hopkins.
The sonnets were also acclaimed by poet Mel Mc Mahon who stated that some of them would not be out of place in John Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnets’, as they had an authority prepared to tackle significant issues. ‘They have an amazing ability to sieve through ideas and find the nuggets worth keeping. These poems have a real sense of connecting with the past and ancient past and as such there is a brooding sense of mystery that is very appealing.’
The central philosophy of ‘The Tribe of Earth’ is that the dominant human drive is not any of the conventional factors of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy or any related philosophy, but the factor of ‘the possession of being.’ This dynamic gives fresh identification to the sense of human destiny, to the rituals, beliefs, identities, drives, fears, tensions, actions, art, loves and hatreds of the human race – that all these are manifestations of the much deeper factor of the possession – and have no identity outside this. Related to this, the notion of the mystical is no longer the preserve of the hermit or of rare intense meditation, but is natural and common to all human beings – the experience of the possession of being – not a creation of human thought, but that of which all thought and action exists.
In these poems, the sense of being replaces and gives fresh understanding to the common notion of the sense of place. But while the factor of the mystical is the source of all creativity, of all profound civilization, it is also the source of all conflict where basic notions of fear and loss are the actual fear and loss of all existence.
This notion of the mystical pervades all culture and freshly identifies the sense of worth, belonging, destiny, ambitions of a people, that the poems provide a fresh mystical dynamic to the events, scenery, places, sporting activities, traditional music, the unique cultural intensity of rural Ireland based around the GAA and so on -all expressions of the wider universal phenomenon identified.
There are four sections in this overall collection, the first is a series of lyrical poems on various new themes all related to the universal reality of the mystical in human life, here and worldwide, and themes for the future of Ireland and its creative role in the world.
The second part, ‘Ninety-nine variations’ presents a large series of short, condensed lyrical poems. The third section is a fresh presentation of the notion of Logos depicting the drama of the origin of the word, spoken and written, culminating in the creation of the great Irish manuscripts such as the Book of Kells- a supreme universal artistic affirmation of the Logos.
The final section, the Temple, projects an imaginary influence of the transforming identification of the major human drive as newly identified on the poetry approach of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Dante and the creators of the Upanishads, working to unify ‘the cataracts of western thought, the great meander of the east.’
The poems in the first section are temporarily free to read on www.petermakem.co.uk This will give people a chance to judge their quality for themselves. ‘The Tribe of Earth’ will be for sale in Waterstones from next week priced £15.
The book is also available in the Veritas store in Newry.
