Reconstructions

The Troubles in Photographs and Words

Steafán Hanvey

• Publisher: Merrion Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781785372230
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Historia de la fotografía

World-renowned Northern Irish photographer, Bobbie Hanvey, captured some of The Troubles' most defining and devastating moments. Bobbie is lauded as much for these photographs as he is for his iconic portraits of figures like Seamus Heaney, Gerry Adams, Brian Friel, and Ian Paisley.

In Reconstructions,these photographs take on even greater resonance when set in context by Bobbie's eldest son, singer-songwriter and poet, Steafán Hanvey. Inspired by the photographs, he often witnessed coming to life in the darkroom, Steafán's memories of a childhood less ordinary are presented in a lyric poetry filled with startling imagery and insights that capture the wit, cadences, anguish, and dreams of the people of Northern Ireland.

Reconstructions daringly conflatesthe public and the private,and acts as a timely reminder of just how futile and unnecessary internecine conflict really is. But most of all, Bobbie andSteafán, father and son, have produced a book that is a testament to the strength and resilience of ordinary people living through extraordinary times.

The Way of Them

For Adrian Rice and Alan Stuart Mearns

The man before us,

doing our looking,

is past currying favour;

he has taken leave of his lodge

for a moment alone.

A follower of the Lambeg,

he is dead-beat after pounding

the roads of Ulster for Queen and country,

and now, hat-on-knee,

we catch him in repose, taking in

all that has taken it out of him

but drives him still.

This Orangeman’s demeanour is a wee bit off

as they usually wear order like a badge of honour.

We’re used to seeing them in sunlight,

rigged-out, bowler hat to hobnail,

upright and uptight, defiant and proud,

and flanked on both sides by stern brethren.

Still, our man is a picture, composed,

sitting there like Billy-No-Mates,

out of the frame

but about to be pulled into one,

all the same.

*****

Once members of the Civil Rights Movement,

my folks weren’t blind

to improvements long overdue.

The way it was, or the way things were,

would only serve to get you so far,

yet tolerance was no stranger

in the house anomaly built;

my parents made choices.

Both were blow-ins, springing from

border-town and townland

but settling in Downpatrick,

and I wasn’t let forget it.

As a young cub in Brookeborough, Fermanagh,

a Protestant neighbour,

and not for bad manners,

would put my four-year-old da up on his knee

and run him through chapter and verse

of ‘The Sash My Father Wore’.

It wasn’t long before George Kirkpatrick

would have him singing it,

like Lord Carson’s cat1

regaling visitors, and him only four,

the Taig next door,

with inhibitions no more.

Not your average rite-of-passage

for a Northern Catholic, or so we’re told;

an experience as fond and profound as it is old.

With our ones, there’s a sectarian foot-fetish –

an obsession with having to know

which foot one kicks with.

Once, after a show in Hickory, North Carolina,

the poet, Adrian Rice, approached me and said:

Back in the day, we didn’t know what your da was.

To which I replied: I don’t think he knows himself!

*****

As I re-tread old ground of my own,

dotting the lines through milestones,

I forever arrive at each and every how and why:

Holidaying at Granny Hanvey’s,

I was often exposed

to names I’d never heard tell of before,

not because my ears had been intentionally closed,

it was just that names such as Armstrong

sounded very composed,

and from the likes of Cartwright and Atwell,

I recall, right well, a welcoming warmth

from what I could tell.

Robert Atwell lived on Main Street there

and always put me in mind of the orchard-chair

he’d lend us to raid apples across from his house.

He had nothing but the time of day for my bounce

whenever I rapped his dure,

and my giddy elation when out he’d r...