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Word Music
by Hubert Newman
Format: Hardback
Publication date: 20th August 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907179-80-8
Price: €15.00
Hubert N. Newman was born in Dublin, the son of Nettie, a Dubliner and of Victor J. Newman, P.C., from Cork. He has a sister and two nieces on whom he also relies for inspiration. He was educated at St. Andrew’s College and then at Trinity, where he qualified BdentSc in 1967. For most of his career he has studied and worked in oral health care in the UK and still does some research and teaching.
Mostly from parents, but also at school and the compulsory arts course at Trinity he gained his love of literature and remains keen to link Art and Science. To him as to others poetry, not least in the English language, should be word music. He misses the notes, the metre, the rhyme and not least the clear meaning of the verse of times past.
He has tried to evoke the romantic spirit of that era in this anthology.
A la recherche in Dublin…
Dublin isn’t the same at all
As I pass by the long, long wall,
That capsule of Trinity Green.
But the view from Kildare hasn’t changed
From Dáil to TCD.
Old Bewley’s lost for evermore -
Shadow coffee of yore,
Your tobacco juice burned us,
Your buns shrank and turned us,
So out went the characters,
The craic and the chisellers,
The students, the poets,
The girls, and the boys.
Why should prosperity sour our honey,
Ireland once free, enslaved by money!
But Stephen’s Green is as bonny as ever,
With kids breading ducks
Where the green is so green,
And the calm is so peaceful
Against the cauldron-bubble
Of the new Dubh-linn,
Jostling and crowded,
A people enshrouded.
From Tallaght to Connolly,
Sandyford to Stephen,
The stuffed lives trundle,
Packed with body and bundle,
No matter the time
That the calling bells chime.
I would have thought it a dream,
A sky postcard-blue
In a Dublin summer
By my childhood duck-water
In that heart-centre Square.
Now we’ve all played here,
Three generations of innocent joy
From the stout soul of Corkonian boy.
