Two poems by Ian Duhig were submitted In January 1991 to Sean McGouran, the Editor of various publications for NIGRA (The Northern Ireland Gay rights Association) to be published as two pieces of poetry because of a piece that Sean had written in ‘Fortnight’magazine, a left-of-centre magazine produced in N Ireland for the N Ireland market, but with larger ramifications.
The two pieces of poetry by Ian Duhig were in support of Gay Pride Week in Belfast, our first Gay Pride in 1991. Our first Pride march consisted of 120 individuals who marched through Belfast City Centre to the Botanic Gardens. To quote John Bercow, who was the 157th Speaker of the House of Commons when he visited us in 2013
…What was once a celebration marked by a tiny hardcore of principled and brave individuals has been transformed into something approaching institutional status. …
Pride Belfast has moved on, to quote its current organisers (and others)
…Belfast Pride is one of the biggest festivals in Belfast, Ireland’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender festival and ranks in the top ten largest Pride parades in the UK! …
What Ian Says…
The two poems by Ian Duhig are connected by the idea of jealousy and religion. This is because they were written after the anti-clause 27/88 campaign had focused on letters to members of the House of Lords in an effort to get changes. He found himself writing to the Archbishop of York and observing the extraordinary protocol that goes with it (you certainly don’t often get to start letters with ‘Your Grace’). Both poems are closely based on fact. Mar Jacobus being a friend of Corvo’s called Lewis or something and Bartolomea and Bendetta’s story came from research on an American historian called Janet Brown(?)was doing amongst old Medici papers in the Vatican. The latter was one of the joint winners of the Northern Poetry Competition in England in 1989 and both will be appearing in his book the Bradford Count which was published on 27 June 1991.
What
Brendan Kennelly said about Ian’s Book of Poetry ‘The Bradford Count’
…Ian Duhig’s witty and bizarre poems are profane and profound, often drawing on tall tales and strange episodes from history, Irish legend and colonial lore. Shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. ‘Ian Duhig’s world is an exciting blend of the old and the new, the tragic and the comic, the grave and the light-hearted… He rifles mythologies, histories, legends and folklores in a manner that is at once devastating and disarming.’ – Brendan Kennelly…
Archbishop Mar Jacobus Remembers the Baron
Even the Syro-Chaldean bishopric I offered
On the strength of ‘Hadrian VII@
Did not tempt Corvo. As mere Provost
To the Lieutenant of Grandmagistracy
Of Santissima Sophia he fled
To Veniuce, convinced the Rhodes Trustees
Were plotting his assassination…
Splenditello
I, Guliano Carlini, third richest man
In Vellano, this scurfedge of the Apennines,
Where our children are assailed by witches
In the shapes of swallows or nightingales,
Which is rich only in undowried girls,
Which is scoffed at even in Pescia,
I do promise and avow, Madonna,
That I will make my house a shrine to you
And my only child, my daughter Benedetta,
Blessed, will be herself a hymn to you…
Links –
- Speaker delivers lecture at Belfast Pride Festival 4th July 2013
- Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans + History Month
- New Pride: How Belfast embraced its LGBTQ+ population – OU
- The History of Pride in Ireland
- Lost in Belfast – 12: The beginnings of Gay Pride in Belfast
- Belfast Pride Festival
- Amazon – The Bradford Count
- Poetry from Peter Brooke
- Gay Pride, Belfast 1991 – on to civil rights/equal citizenship