My late uncle, John Montague, is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets 20th century Ireland produced. While his work is loved and admired by many, I think it’s also fair to say that he’s also something of a well-kept secret, especially in his native Ulster. He was on the school curriculum in the Republic for many years. He was also Ireland’s first Professor of Poetry, a role set up following Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize in 1995. John was 10 years older than Heaney, and his Collected Poems came out also in 1995, which John regarded as execrable timing. It seemed to confirm his experience as the eternal outsider, always on the margins, never quite belonging.
His mid-Ulster family was profoundly affected by the partition of Ireland. His parents emigrated to New York, where John was born in 1929. The children were sent back home in 1933, ahead of their mother’s return. John was separated from his elder brothers, who stayed with their maternal grandmother. However, John was parcelled off to be brought up in Garvaghey, Co Tyrone, by two of his father’s unmarried sisters.
His double separation from both his parents and then his brothers had a profound effect on John. His mother’s return a few years later to her mother’s house (his father stayed on in the US for many years), reinforced his sense of isolation from the rest of his birth family. While his aunts loved him deeply, his mother’s reluctance to retrieve him, no doubt with the best of intentions, wounded him. It was a wound he never fully recovered from; but he did, at some cost, channel and transform it into poetry. His work draws parallels between the fracture in his birth family and the partition of Ireland (and of Ulster). He’s also recognised as a major love poet and is a wonderful nature poet. He drew on his multiple identities – Irish and American, and Francophile. He lived in France for much of his adulthood, and he died there. He received a Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur, France’s highest civil award.
But it was to Garvaghey that he came home to rest. And it is in Garvaghey, that John Montague 1929-2016: A Poet’s Life, by acclaimed biographer Adrian Frazier will be launched next month. Professor Frazier offers an intimate and authoritative portrait of John, drawing on over 40 years of personal friendship and exclusive access to the poet’s private papers.
The Irish/UK edition is published by Lilliput Press (Dublin). A US edition will be published by Wake Forest University Press in Spring 2025.
A Poet’s Life will be launched in the GAA centre, Garvaghey, Co Tyrone at 7pm on Thursday 5 December 2024 – and all are welcome.
There are also launches in: Dublin, Dec 4th, 6pm Irish Writers Centre, Parnell Sq, Dublin, and in Galway, Dec 6th, 6pm, Charlie Byrne’s bookstore, Galway.
Born out of pain and conflict, and despite all the difficulties of his life, transforming his experience into beautiful and often profoundly moving poetry, it’s good to have this telling of John Montague’s story being celebrated in the place that shaped him.
mary-montague.com 