W. R. Rodgers

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
Irish Literary Portraits (BBC 1972): W. B. Yeats, 1-22; James Joyce, 22-76 [two sections on the younger and the older artist]; George Moore, 75-93; Shaw, pp.117-42; , Oliver St. John Gogarty, 142-68; F. R. Higgins, 169-184; AE (George Russell), pp.185-203; additional section, ‘Old Ireland Free’, being memories of 1916, with Seamus O’Suillivan, Edward Stephens, Richard best, Oliver St. John Gogarty, George Roberts, Fred O’Donovan, Cecil Salkeld, Liam Ó Briain, Bulmer Hobson, Desmond Ryan, Pearse Beasley, Cathal O’Shannon, Helena Maloney, Sean McGarry, [?et al.]

[ top ]

[ top ]

Commentary

Conor Cruise O’Brien: ‘Bertie Rodgers was an Ulster Presbyterian who sought and enjoyed the company of Southern Catholics. The case is not unique: it remains unusual. [...] He was, among so much else, a good Dubliner and Dublin loved him.’ (Introduction to Irish Literary Portraits, 1972, pp.ix-x; quoted in PRONI Papers of W. R. Rodgers, p.4, online.)

Patrick Kavanagh, ‘Paris in Aran’, in Kavanagh’s Weekly (7 June 1952, p.7): ‘I bought the Penguin edition of the plays of Synge solely for the Introduction by W. R. Rodgers, for at a glance anyone could see that Mr Rodgers is a remarkable bucklepper. Sorry for using that word again, but it is the word that best fits this thing. / Mr Rodgers is a word-weaver, a phrase-maker the equal of any Radio Éireann writer. / There is something to be said for Rodgers’ bucklepping Irishness: he is out of touch with anything that may be called Irish and he is not good enough to live without a country. / Sometimes I am tempted to forget the Protestant friends of this paper and to cry “What dreadful humbug Protestantism!” Then I remember all the bouncing Roman boys and 1 begin to wonder if stupidity and charlatanism has any particular religion. / But because of all this, Mr Rodgers is well qualified to introduce Synge: he is a Protestant clergyman, and Synge was connected with that profession. […].’ (Rep. in A Poet’s Country: Selected Prose of Patrick Kavanagh, ed. Antoinette Quinn, Dublin: Lilliput Press 2003, pp.189-92; p.189; see further remarks, some of which appear under Synge, Commentary, infra; also from Kavanagh’s Weekly, No. 9, in Patrick Kavanagh > Quotations, supra.)

John Montague, ‘The Impact of International Modern Poetry on Irish Writing’, in Irish Poets in English: The Thomas Davis Lectures on Anglo-Irish Poetry, ed. Sean Lucy, Cork: Mercier Press 1972): ‘Another false trail, from the point of view of this lecture, is the work of W. R. Rodgers, the parson poet from Co. Armagh. His Awake! and Other Poems appeared in 1941 and its cascade of language might almost have been a warning to other Irish poets, caught in a neutral backwater: “Always the arriving winds of words / Pour like Atlantic gales over these cars ...” / And sure enough, there were poems with Audenesque titles like “Directions to a Rebel”, “War-Time”, and even “End of a World”. According to those close to him, however, Rodgers had not read Auden, or even Hopkins, which is astonishing: can one imagine a physicist, however remote, who had never heard of Neils Bohr or Schrodinger? / [...] The best work of W. R. Rodgers [...] seems to me to be in his second book, a handful of religious and love lyrics which are colloquial in diction, but traditional in imagery. But the necessary task of providing Ireland with a contemporary poetry still had to be continued.’ (p.154; for full text, see RICORSO Library, “Critical Classics”, infra.)

Derek Mahon, ‘An Imprudential Poet’, review of Poems of W. R. Rodgers, ed. Michael Longley (Irish Times, 1993); rep. in Journalism: Selected Prose 1970-1995I (Gallery Press 1996), pp.88-91; quotes with approbation Terence Brown, ‘Perhaps if he had had the benefit of [a] richly [?d]ense poetic tradition when he began to write, his remarkable talent might have been held in check. But, deprived of such nurture, his work represents a sudden wild profusion [...] that, sadly, ran to seed.’ (p.88); Mahon illustrates this by showing that Rodgers, in describing Europa sitting ‘idly’ on the bull’s back, clearly has no sense of poetic tradition and particularly misses ‘her fluttering clothes, tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes’, of Ovid’s original. (p.89.)

Seamus Heaney, ‘Feeling into Words’, in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78 (Faber 1980): ‘[W. R. Rodgers was] much lured by alliteration’ - quoting: ‘an abrupt people / Who like the spiky consonants of speech ...’] (pp.41-60; p.[44].)

Amy Smith, ‘“The far-off hills of the imagination”: W. R. Rodgers and the Second World War’, in Irish University Review, 46:2 (2016), pp.209-323: ‘W. R. Rodgers emerged onto the scene of modern poetry at the end of the nineteen thirties, initially featuring in the pages of The New Statesman and Nation, Horizon, The Listener, and The Bell. His first volume, Awake! and Other Poems, quickly followed in 1941. Rodger's idiosyncratic and exhunerant poetic voice, in addition to his employment as a Presbyterian minister in the remote village of Loughgall in Co. Armagh, inevitably invited critical comparison with G. M. Hopkins. Many reviewers enthusiatically celebratd the "all-round sheer excellence" of his work, "apart from a rather tiresome revelling in alliteration". Although Rodgers was hailed as one of the most significant poets writing during the Second World War, this seemingly indulgent use of word-play was the primary cause of a subsequent slump in his reputation. As literary fashions changed and the neo-romantic mode fell out of favour towards the end of the nineteen forties, so too did Rodgers's popularity decline. Patrick Kavanagh felt that his 'verbal excitement’ failed to compensate for the fact that 'he has very little to say', while Kingsley Amis complainted that 'brass instruments are sonorous enough, but it is unwise to make them all play fortissimo all the time." / Subsequent attempts to recover Rodgers' reputation hvae not been entirely successful. [...] The opportunity came with Michael Longley's edition of the Poems in 1993 and a new edition of a radio play entitled The Return Room in 2010. However, Rodgers and his Belfast-based contemporaries continued to be overshadowed by the Irish Literary Revival and the so-called Belfast Renaissance [...] reinforcing the assumption that the statelet was characterized by creative stagnation and infertility in the mid-century.’ (pp.309-10.) [See further under John Hewitt - as supra.]

[ top ]

Quotations
‘An Ulster Protestant’: In an unsigned article in The Bell in 1942, Rodgers wrote of Protestant Ulster’s mode of speech: ‘The Protestant has a sharp expulsive, jerky accent, as if he were trying to dig out of himself something that he has been thinking ... The Protestant Ulsterman has halts and supressions of feeling in his speech, is slow to communicate, reserved, self-conscious, inarticulate and therefore makes his connections with other people through logic rather than emotion ... He would like to have eloquence. But he suspects and hates eloquence that has no bone of logic in it. It seems to him glib, spineless, and insincere.’ (The Bell, Vol. IV, No. 5, Aug. 1942, p.309; quoted in Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975).

Also: ‘The shadow, the unwanted word that makes its way in, uninvited, on the tail of another words – why, every poem is full of these uninvited guests. And thank God too, because they are the divine visitors, and in entertaining them we entertain angels unawares.’ (Ibid., quoted in Brown, op. cit., [p.12.])

The Ulster Catholic: ‘The Catholic is a charming and courteous person, open in manner and eloquent in speech. His faults are those of volatility “easy come, easy go”. “A glib person”, says the Protestant. […] The Ulster Protestant is a cautious, logical and far-seeing person in speech and action and he distrusts eloquence. His virtue is that of stability. “A stiff person”, says the Catholic.’ (“Poems Reprinted”, in Community Forum, Vol. 4, No. 1 [1947]; quoted in Dominic Murray, Worlds Apart: Segregated Schools in Northern Ireland, Appletree Press 1985, p.8.)

The Ulstermen and Their Country (1947): ‘[...] these characters, Protestant and Catholic are complementary [...] One takes a long view of life, the other a short and roundabout one. One is thoughtful and individual, the other is emotional and communal. One tends to a democratic and progressive way of life, the other to a hieratic and static. It is this diversity and interplay of opposites that makes Ulster life such a rich and fascinating spectacle.’ (Quoted in Joanne Savage, review of A Salute from the Banderol: : The Selected Writings of Sam Hanna Bell, ed. Fergus Hanna Bell, at Culture northernireland.org - online [dated 15.04.2010; accessed 05.12.2011.]

‘The Dance of Words’: ‘[W]ords like to leap, to laugh, to be in two places at once, to have double meanings and double crossings, to flash from likeness to like of image, and branch to branch of sounds, and bid farewell to each welcome.’ (New Statesman and Nation, 1 Aug., 1953, p.126; quoted in Terence Brown, op. cit., 1975.)

‘Balloons and Maggots’: ‘No poet to my knowledge ever sits down and says to himself, “I’m going to write a poem in iambic pentameter.” No, all he knows is that there’s a certain pressure of experience within him which asks for expression. There’s a power of words that is imprisoned and like underground water-springs they are bursting to be let out.’ (Rann, No. 14 [Autumn 1954], p.11; quoted in Terence Brown, op. cit., 1975.)

‘Time to Kill’: ‘Nothing pleases me more than to sit on both sides of the fense, and if there were six sides I would sit on them all ...’ (New Statesman and Nation, 21 March 1953, p.336; quoted in Terence Brown, op. cit., 1975.)

Too fond of words: ‘The Irish are much too fond of the spoken word to bother much about the written word.’ (Quoted in Laurence Flanagan, Irish Humorous Quotations, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994.)

[ top ]

Ulster speech (1): ‘[B]rusque and Protestant, / or whom the world is still a fightly word, / Who bristle into reticence at the sounds/Of the round gift of the gab in Southern mouths./Mine were not born with silver spoons in gob, / Nor would they thank you for the gift of tongues; / he dry riposte, the bitter repartees, / The Northman’s bite and portion, his deep sup / Is silence; though, still within his shell/He holds the old sea-roar and surge of rhetoric and Holy Writ.’ (Collected Poems, 147[f.]; quoted [with further lines], in Terence Brown, op. cit., 1975, pp.125-26.)

Ulster Speech (2): ‘I am Ulster, my people an abrupt people / Who like the spiky consonants in speech / And think the [?soft] ones cissy, who [hears] / The k and t in orchestra, detect sin / In sinfonia, get a kick of / Tin cans, fricatives, fornication, / staccato talk, / Anything that gives or takes attack […]’ (q. source).

Quick, woman: ‘Quick, woman, in your net / Catch the silver I fling! / O I am deep in your debt / Draw tight, skin-tight, the string, And rake the silver in. / No fisher ever yet / Drew such a cunning ring.’

‘The Stone-Men’ [Chap. 17], ‘… the tiny clustered clinks/Of little chisels tinkling tirelessly/On stone […].’ (Verses quoted as epigraph to E. Estyn Evans, Mourne Country, Dundalgan Press 1951, p.155.)

[ top ]

The Ulstermen and the Country: ‘These characters, Protestant and Catholic, are complementary. They make to halves of life. One takes a long view of life, the other short and roundabout one. One is thoughtful and individual, the other is emotional and communal. One tends to a democratic and progressive way of life, the other to a hieratic and static. it is this diversity and interplay of opposites that makes Ulster life such a rich and fascinating spectacle.’ (Quoted in Sam Hanna Bell, ‘A Banderol’ [introduction], Arts in Ulster, 1931, p.13.)

Racial clash: ‘Wherever two racial patterns meet and clash blindly there is a wave thrown up between them, a creative wave of self-consciousness. And this is happening in Ulster to-day. You will find there a new and growing awareness in literature and painting and architecture.’ ([?Evans, op. cit.,] p.19.)

[ top ]

References
Belfast Public Library (1956 Cat.) holds Europa and the Bull, and other Poems (1957); The Ulstermen and their Country (n.d.).

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects from Awake! and Other Poems, ‘White Christmas; from Europa and the Bull, ‘Lent’, ‘The Net’ [pp.166-68; Biog., p.170.] Collected Poems (OUP 1971).

Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1995), selects “Snow” [101]; “Lent” [103]; “The Net” [104]; “Stormy Night” [105].

British Library holds Awake! and Other Poems. London: Secker & Warburg 1941. 69pp. 8o.; Collected Poems. London: Oxford University Press 1971. xxv, 149pp. 23 cm.; Essex roundabout ... with drawings by Meg Stevens. Colchester: Benham & Co 1963. 63pp. 24 cm.; Europa and the Bull, and other poems. 94pp. Secker & Warburg: London, 1952. 8o.; Ireland in Colour. A collection of forty colour photographs. With an introductory text and notes on the illustrations by W. R. Rodgers. London. B. T. Batsford 1957. 110pp. 8o.; Irish literary portraits [of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, George Moore, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, AE.] W. R. Rodger’s broadcast conversations with those who knew them. London: British Broadcasting Corporation 1972. 7, xix, 236pp.. 24 cm. [ISBN 0 563 10347]; The Ulstermen and their Country. [with illustrations]. 31pp. [British Council] London: Longmans Green & Co. [1947] 8o.;

[ top ]

Notes
The Return Room (BBC Dec. 1955): a radio play written in June 1955 while Gerard Dillon was visiting Rodgers in his Essex farmhouse. It was written in response to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood - the whole written with ‘Gerard Dillon’s voice in my mind’ as the latter sung his songs. The play evokes Belfast in the 1920s as a city of tugboats and May Queens, ‘ships and shawlies, doles and doyleys’, surrounded by a ‘halo of hills’ and caught in ‘a  hug-me-tight of holiness’. The Blackstaff Press edition includes the illustrations drawn by Dillon to accompany the script, reflecting their shared memories of Belfast; also a CD of the original 1955 recording in which Rodgers takes the part of the narrator and Dillon performs traditional Belfast songs such as “My Lagan Love” and “You’d Easy Know a Doffer”. (See Blackstaff notice - online; accessed 29.07.2011.)

[ top ]