South
Armagh is a beautiful part of the country - well,
so far as I can tell anyway, never having actually
set foot in the place.
The
closest I have come, or ever been inclined to, has
been to gaze out at it with bogus indifference from
behind the window of a Dublin- or Belfast-bound
train.
I
say bogus, because on my infrequent travels through
that locality I have been anything but indifferent
to it.
Admittedly,
though, things other than scenery have been on my
mind.
Such
as struggling to repress a wholly irrational, but
nonetheless rather disconcerting, mental image of
me hanging upside down in some isolated cowshed
at the mercy of a local republican interrogation
squad.
And,
related to that, hoping that if any of my fellow
passengers happen to notice my lips moving, they
might just think I'm slightly deranged, and not
realise that, in fact, I'm offering up a silent
prayer along the lines of: "Please Lord, if
this train breaks down, let it be anywhere but in
south Armagh."
Unfair
to demonise an entire community, I know, but rationality
usually comes a poor second to imagination when
travelling through hostile territory. And if recent
history ever characterised a locale as seeming to
be totally hostile to someone of my political and
religious persuasions, then south Armagh fits the
bill perfectly.
What
I never could have imagined was that, courtesy of
the peace process, I would become firm friends with
someone from that area. But, much to my surprise
and delight, that is exactly what has happened.
Almost unnoticed, some thinking people in Northern
Ireland have taken the opportunity provided by the
peace process to break free from the suffocating,
decades-long, imposition of narrow, communal constraints.
As
a result, relationships are being built through
rational discussion and exploration of differing
ideas among people from all sorts of backgrounds
who, in previous times, would never have met. What
started as a friendly correspondence between me
and a Keady man, Peter Makem, has evolved to the
point where he and I now meet on a regular basis
to drink copious amounts of coffee, generally chew
the fat, and, in our own way, attempt to put the
world to rights.
Peter,
a writer, poet and amateur historian, has some interesting
ideas. He is a republican (nothing strange or wrong
in that), but not of the usual type, and certainly
not of a type I would have associated with south
Armagh.
He
speaks and writes of what he calls, The Republic
of the Intellect. In its most basic form, his thesis
argues that if some future 32-county united Irish
Republic is to be anything other than merely another
indistinguishable economic and cultural appendage
of the European Union or the United States, its
people must strive to reclaim the inheritance and
singular identity of the "golden age"
when Ireland was last a real cultural and intellectual
centre.
It
is worth mentioning, that Peter doesn't define the
"people of Ireland" in narrow religious,
political or ethnic terms (he castigates those as
phoney and self-destructive in the extreme) but
simply as "the people who live here".
And,
here's the rub for southerners, he is adamant that
the centre for any such Irish national renaissance
must be in Belfast and its political engine located
at Stormont.
I
don't go much distance along the road with Makem
in his ideas (the notion of anything even approaching
a totally autonomous nation surviving in today's
world seems fanciful, to say the least) though on
one point I am in complete agreement: like him,
I am convinced that there is an enormous depth of
talent in Northern Ireland that will only truly
burst forth if, or when, the distracting and destructive
dam wall of political and societal upheaval is banished.
Poetry
is Peter Makem's first love and, philistine that
I am, the field in which I am least equipped to
judge his talent or the lack of it. Beyond the most
obviously beautiful and descriptive examples, like
Wilde's Reading Gaol, most poetry just leaves me
cold.
So
I am content to take the word of former deputy leader
of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, who is something of
an accomplished wordsmith himself, who describes
Makem's poetry as " something completely fresh,
liberating and powerful " and " the equal
of Heaney in beauty of language and power of construction".
Those
of a poetic bent can judge for themselves by visiting
his website at www.petermakem.com
- the point, of course, is not whether Peter Makem's
ideas are realistic or if his poetry is any good,
but rather, that diverse groups of people in Northern
Ireland are at last, of their own volition, beginning
to interact with one another.
And
doing so, more often than not, in defiance of local
norms, and most certainly in stark contrast to the
"ourselves alone" stance of their elected
politicians. It will be a long time, if ever, before
I feel comfortable enough to stop off for a pint
in south Armagh but, for the time being at least,
the cowsheds and prayers have been banished.
