Artists need to invent in reaction to death. I’m not a big fan of broad statements applied to all artists, but this is one I would say applies to nearly all. It’s a time-worn theme, of course, but some come up with interesting ways to say what we’ve heard before. Neil Slevin enlists the help of history here, as well as two giants of the English language – Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
Clearly, this is a poem that harks back to the past, but the future is also a central concern. We all have some sense of a legacy at the back of our minds, and, at the end of the day, this is all we will have when time catches up with us and we become part of the past.
Slevin tackles the theme in a fairly indirect way here, without drawing himself into the poem, which gives it a story-like quality. It’s also the sense of the mythic that really captured my attention here. The emperor that Slevin describes is an example of a vain attempt to outdo time (in both senses of the word in this case). When faced with thoughts of death, there is a little emperor in all of us.
When Colours Run
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Old men tell the story of Cathay’s emperor,
a man who avoided the future,
who in his divine wisdom, and facing death,
forbade his people from using the future tense
because without him they could have no future.
And they muse about time and how we tell it,
highlight that before Christ we had no such thing,
that after His birth we had options.
Did you ever make that mistake at school,
believing that A.D. meant After Death?
Wiser now, I wonder if men like Cathay and Christ,
Macbeth and Othello were one,
perhaps not in face or nature, but in outlook:
believing that time would wait for them
to find their way back from the ether
as if they could forbid the wind
from breath and stars from smile,
their fellow man from a life of dreams and death
while they packed up their moon
and dismantled our sun.
I am a 26 year-old writer from Co. Leitrim. An English teacher, having graduated with a B.Sc. in Physical Education with English from the University of Limerick in 2011, I have returned to university to complete an M.A. in Writing at N.U.I. Galway and to pursue a writing-based career.
I write for Sin (N.U.I. Galway's student newspaper), editing its entertainment section and culture column, Resonate, and as Events Reporter for the Institute for Lifecourse and Society (an N.U.I. Galway campus centre providing community-based initiatives for the local area).
Since September 2015, I was SMITH Magazine’s Writer of the Month for October, and have won various awards, including Creative Writing Ink Journal’s writing prompt competition for October-November 2015 and Cultured Vultures’ poem of the week competition. My poetry has been published by The Galway Review and numerous international journals, including Scarlet Leaf Review and Artificium: The Journal.
History and myth are often friends to poetry, I feel, in that they tend to blend well into poems. Would you agree or disagree, and could you comment on how you approached this here?
History and myth are often poetry’s friends, and they do blend well into poems, but I think this is a tradition that’s dying out. In my opinion, contemporary poetry is more concerned with contemporary issues, and that’s something I am happy to encourage and be part of. Modern writers should respond to the here and now. They should look to the future, rather than harp back.
I like the idea of poetry becoming a historical source. A good poem can become its own piece of history, one that readers reflect on once enough time has passed since its creation, and the moment it crystallises.
My poem was inspired by my reading of John Banville’s novel The Infinities, which in turn was inspired by von Kleist’s play Amphitryon. I was struck by the character Adam facing death as he lay in a coma, still conscious of his surroundings, life and his family going on around him. The idea that no man – even a mathematician of Adam’s ability, who dedicated his life to solving life’s problems – can escape death’s inevitability was a catalyst for this piece.
In the text, Cathay’s emperor also features as an anecdote; his directive resonates. As a child (I was painful to deal with even then), I struggled with the idea that I was just one speck in a world full of them. It’s something I still struggle to accept. I want to believe that I exist for a reason, that my existence and my actions matter, and that they will continue to matter when I die.
How would you describe the role of mortality/death in your work, and how do you think it affects the work of other writers?
Mortality doesn’t play a significant role within my work; I’m told I haven’t lived or lost enough. And I hope I won’t reach that point in life any time soon. To me, mortality constitutes finding the occasional white hair, not being able to run a lap as quickly or as easily as the teenage me could, etc.
But when I step outside of myself, considering death confronts me with the realisation that the people I love and care for won’t be around forever. I am starting to think about and deal with that reality, but I doubt I’ll be ready for when those moments come.
On the other hand, grief and loss, not to mention longing for what might have or could have been, are motifs that you will find in much of my writing. I am one of the world’s worst losers, I find it very hard to let go, and grief and loss are such natural, universal emotions, hence their presence in a number of my poems. I “harp back” because I tend to write what I think and feel, things I cannot always express through speech.
When I write, I run with what comes out, so a lot of my poetry is based on my experiences and my responses to them. A comrade has convinced me that, as a fledgling writer, you have to flush yourself out, so if a poet has lost something or someone important to them, you can expect to sense this within their work.
Writers tend to write about what they know first and then, when they’ve run out, they become more resourceful because they have to create and generate ‘new’ material. I now have to look for ideas to pursue and look forward, rather than look back. I think this pattern is particularly true for poetry. For me, it’s such a personal, insular craft; I often cannot escape myself.
The King James Bible and Shakespeare have both had a huge influence on the English language, and maybe our perspectives/consciousness in general. Could you tell us how you came to include both of these in this poem, and whether their inclusion was somehow inevitable even before you embarked on the first draft?
The Infinities spurred this poem into being. Before I’d read it, I don’t think I’d given my own mortality any serious thought. Reading about Cathay’s emperor drove me to think about Christ, and my nomad mind progressed to thinking about Macbeth, a character who took hold of me in 4th year of secondary school and never let go.
Charles J. Haughey’s story is also an influence. Last year I read a book and watched the RTÉ drama series about Haughey in the months preceding my first draft of “When Colours Run”. Like Cathay, Macbeth, and Othello, Haughey seems to have been obsessed by his own mortality and legacy; he even quoted Othello in his final speech as Taoiseach.
Looking back, attending a Catholic primary school engrained a sense of religion within me. Though I am no longer particularly religious, I think a certain level of faith remains part of me. My being able to believe and hope for something greater in life is important, and though I’m not a practising Catholic, religion is something I’ve neither extracted myself from nor developed any real desire to leave behind.
As for Shakespeare, I think so much of his work, particularly his tragedies, maps out the defining thoughts and experiences of our lives. For me, the most beautiful and frightening aspect of Shakespeare’s work is that no matter what you are thinking or feeling, there is probably a Shakespearian character or quotation that deals with the same experience.
Sticking with religion, and putting you on the spot now, do you think religion (in general, and particular religions) should be taught in school? What do they have to offer, and what are the drawbacks?
I do think that schools should teach some form of religious education, but that it should be a more “ecumenical matter”. Father Ted allusions aside, imparting a knowledge and understanding of people’s beliefs and values to our young people is very important. Though I think that my primary school experience was overly religious, I respect the experience because it grounded me.
I attended a secondary school with a “community” ethos. Although Catholicism still influenced our school’s practice, people of other faiths and cultures were, I believe, made to feel welcome. Their beliefs and values were respected and catered for.
As a student, I enjoyed Religious Education. Learning about the cornerstones of other faiths helped me to understand people of other cultures and religions, and the subject helped to prepare me for the society we now live in, one where religion and people’s beliefs are contentious issues.
I think schools should continue to teach R.E., but the subject needs to retain and develop its breadth and inclusivity. It should be for students of every system of beliefs, including agnosticism, but it shouldn’t be compulsory. If people don’t wish to study it, they shouldn’t be forced to. Religion should be a choice, rather than an expectation.
Why do you write?
I write because I am driven to, because it’s what I am best at. I never tire of working with words, and I strive constantly to better my work with them. One of my earliest poems, “My Escape”, best explains my relationship with writing: “I write to be and escape me”.
If you had one piece of advice for a writer, what would it be?
People might think that writing’s a solitary art, but you shouldn’t isolate yourself. I’ve learned a lot and produced most of my best work as a result of working with others.
Don’t be afraid to take that class, ask others to critique your work, be rejected, etc. It’s all part of the process. I read somewhere that every person is a writer. From when we wake up until we fall asleep, we write – in our thoughts, our actions, our speech. But so much of what we write never makes it to the page.
Go out, meet people, and live a life worth writing about; words will find their way to you.