Observe The Poe-Heads Of Ulster Marching Towards Faber & Faber Poem by Kevin Kiely

I give you two fingers in a definite V for victory
This art thrives on excellence: not wet-turf stack poetry
I could never dig with Seamus's sheep-shaped head
And between forefinger and thumb hold a laptop instead

These careerist Norn Iron poets hijacked language to build a lego-fake
Hyped up rural idolatry parading as literary earthquake
While Charlie Monteith fawned on the London Literary Press via Faber & Faber
British guilt exalted a daisy chain of re-verse-men smudging on Paper & Paper
Frog-marching poeds cashed-in as civil rights fought wrongs in the North
Alone: the real suffering people linked broken arms and marched forth

In a dirty tricks fix vacuous movement of empty mouth
Akin to many of the mushroom-dolmen presses in the South
Fitted green carpet-poets finding a slim volume audience at home
Nostalgia for farm, kitchen, pigsty, and the sub-Kavanagh bog-longing poem

Imagine bleating sheep dressed in homespun ill-fitting woolly kilts
And dull little po-hems like turf-smoke signals, basically: stilted verse on stilts
But this cunning clique worked up a jumble of politics to blame and shame us
And a pretence to proxy history while their aim was fame and be famous
They made ideal Media fillers betwixt the Troubles and Full Page Ads
A bunch of self-exiled, non-artistic have-nots and talentless-never-hads

Rising on the sectarian tide, implying they were speaking for their people
As they pumped up their Plastic Paddy Parnassian Folkloric steeple
Parading dialect as a hallmark: yet, overtly steeped in political journalese
Fooling many with their coughs and preambles and non-literature-tease
Nothing more than a crinkle suited hackademic phalanx pulling strings
Through insider institutional congregational readings
Keeping their bleary dreary eyes on the Guardian, TLS and the BBC
London, Boston, New York, the Irish Times and RTÉ

These pretender dumb-pome-men with exported clipped tones
Poe-Biz behind the scenes & bookings on the phones
Ambassadorial culture-salesfolk who traded IN their native NI
Hotly pursuing reputations for which they would die
Rather than spend a week in Belfast, Armagh or Derry
Unless with a film crew, taxis, and dinners preceded by Tio Pepe Fino sherry

These were the dry-wall poet-spoofs, truly northern, truly rooted
Never beaten, jailed, bombed out, harassed or hooted
Living safely and squarely in Southern Ireland vainly and gainly
Writing North of North about its pastoral landscape mainly
Metaphor gone mad, slack cadenced vocality of the locality
A poetry of fauna, flora and the threshing machine's practicality

These were a Fallacy all in one queue:
Paulin & Murphy & Mahon & Montague
Heaney& Longley & Bugaboo Muldoon
Inhabiting their Shangri-La-La Land
North by North of Pseudo-Brigadoon
Frauds posing with putrid books in hand
Soft-slippered yodelers out of tune

Never exposed for being right royal hypocrites
Poking poetry-hams at home, at America and at peace-loving mainland Brits
Ireland's self-styled scribe-heroes spewing fashionable green ink
Of ploughs, potatoes, hayforks, yokel-clichés and the jawbox sink
Pulling a fast one with nod and wink
Smarter than their public don't you think
They connived, cajoled and curried favour
These cowards abandoned their next door neighbour
And are outed here for their Caper & Caper
Observe that the poe-headers of Ulster marched towards Faber & Faber


[reprinted in Cafe Review (USA) , New: : : Poetry (International) , and VILLAGE: politics and culture (Ireland) ]