By Mike Heenan, Literary Editor
Mike Heenan’s
Selected Urban Affairs & Country Matters
In our second frenzied act of blatant self-promotion this year, we offer our own selected Urban Affairs & Country Matters (BizPoint, 2008) this week. Available at Connor’s Gaelic Pub (Bank & MacLaren), Gabriel’s Pizza (Bank & Somerset) and at 613-230-4640.
Fresh from the printer, this self-published selection of poetry over the past 40 years contains some 50 poems of varying style and quality. Its strength lies in the various stylistic virtuosity of the poet indicating a growth of spirit and control over the "crafte so longe to lerne".
In his Introduction, Irish/Canadian scholar David Shanahan PhD (Dublin) offers this generous assessment:
“His work presents a life, a way of seeing the world, in a voice that is uniquely his own. It is a voice that has been developed over a long life lived out loud. It shows evidence of a deep, natural talent worked on and nurtured over time, like a crystal vessel being shaped and polished by a master....
“Urban Affairs & Country Matters brings together some of Mike’s recent work with a few of the poems that he has shared in gatherings and readings over the past years. The tone and content range widely, from the pastoral beauty of "River Grasses" and "At Poet’s Hill", to the rowdy and rambunctious "My Friend Al Siimes":
Ragged Birch shrugs off
Her whispering, autumn leaves:
Golden butterflies!
Winter-white duvets
Cover our sleeping poets:
Voices linger here.
Crocuses break through
Earthen mounds: Dead poets live
In the smallest sounds.
Shimmering heat bows
Shading willows over brows:
Singing poets still.
Drunk, angle back-pained, cranky Finn
Welcome on my couch again
For The Cure. We share
The Sixties and some cats.
I tell him about Beowulf.
He thinks Grendel’s Dam’s his
Un-dead mother.
“Fuck wolfs,” he sez,
“Got any more of those pain pills?”
“Nope,” sez I.
“We outta booze again?”
“Almost…”
He ups to the can again,
Promptly chucks on the floor
And kicks in some Jimi Hendrix
On the air guitar …
“Old Norse? Of course?”
I grin helpfully, and catch him
As he tries to swan the bathtub.
(He’s a big lad)
Leaving a trail of wet stuff
Back to the couch.
“What’s fer dinner?”
“Chili Dawgs,” sez I slyly,
And open the last
Bottle of Rum.
“For those who knew and appreciated Mohawk Elder and Celtic Harpist, Iain Rohahes Phillips, Mike has honoured his memory in the two pieces “Crutire” and "Requiem for Rohahes" and "Crutire".
Requiem for Rohahes
(“He who takes the long way ‘round”)
Gone with the Creator’s thunder.
Gone in the driving summer rain.
Gone from us all in the holy terror,
Leaving us only his soft refrain.
That night he did not take the long way,
But with his ancient arrows gave
Straight for the heart we know and hate
As the ringed and targeted grave.
He gave what other artists only lend,
And knew and shared his grace;
He knew his music was no accident,
He knew this green world and our place.
Rohahes, with his wonder and surprise, departs
And softly takes the long way ‘round our hearts.
Mike’s Celtic heritage informs much of his life and work, and there is a genuine echo of ancient Celtic themes and rhythms in this collection. "Showers of Gold" is a homage, but it is in his application of this heritage to Canadian themes that Mike produces original and stirring works that add immensely to Canadian Literature.
"His tributes to the Irish navvies of the Rideau Canal and their families reflect the commitment he has made in his own life to their cause and memory. "The Navvies" Return", "The Corktown Bridge" and "Corktown Whispers" represent this aspect of his work. It is preeminently in "Pádraig’s Horn" that Mike has helped create a Celtic-Canadian mythology for the Ottawa Valley. "Autumn Pilgrimage" brings the personal to the mythopoeic:
All down the long graveyard of our Canal
Half-sunken maple leaves
Swirl and cling to our blades.
Wild rice clutches at our gunnels
And whispers softly with our passage.
At wider river stretches past the locks
Red-winged, black acolytes shrill their alarms
From grey and hopeless roods.
Sentinel herons gaze baleful, motionless.
Near dusk, the Cranberry Marsh
And a cold harvest moonrise
Mark our wake with crimson streaks.
Later, wrapped in blankets round the holy campfire,
We fall into fitful rest.
My beloved whimpers in her sleep
And I wonder, was this the final sunset
For my lost, unshriven kinsmen ….
A lone loon’s requiem
echoes
across the blood-dimmed marsh.
“But it is the poems that reveal his own self that will be held most dear by his admirers and friends. Of these, "Cold Heart, Fast Hands" is a benediction and "Wattled by Wan" a true delight. I could speak of every single piece in this collection with warmth and pleasure. But it is enough to repeat: Mike Heenan is a Poet.”
My heart was cold today
As I made my way to church.
That’s odd for me and I can’t say
What put me in the lurch.
It was as if my lights were free
And my soul just wasn’t home.
I sang off-key and couldn’t see
Our Lord in anyone.
What had I done? Or worse, not done?
God has pinned me a wordy loon,
The jig was up! My verse had run
Way over-long Her patient tune.
Getting off the bus, a baby slipped
Out the bottom of her Mum’s back-wear
And I caught her quick before she hit
Steel back steps and pavement bare.
What made old hands so fast again?
Who let me save a soul?
In a rush my light came flooding home.
I once was a handsome old Don,
Respected Poet, Man about Town!
Long-haired, full beard,
Well-trimmed, well heard!
Now I have to hide away,
Shamed by my shaving friend:
Wan The Barber has Wattled me!
My ridicule has no end!
Like Dief The Chief,
Or some crazed turkey
Wattling out public pomes …
Like a literate Lowell Green on Speed,
Now I’m shunned in my friends’ homes !
I love my Barber Wan,
We just forgot, you see,
A poet with a Wattle
Ain’t got Authority.
Careless hairless phrases
Once powered with beard ashaggle
Don’t resonate in places
When the wattle starts to waggle.
Damn you, Wan,
I’ll have to write
Hairless pomes for a year
And see if I’m half the pote
With half the beard I used to be.
About the author
Mike Heenan’s poetry and criticism has appeared in Literary Mags such as CVII, Inscape, Bywords, and is anthologized in Ottawa Gems (Baico), Poets of The Capital (Borealis) and Canadian Poetry (UWO).
His first poetry collection, Landing Sights (Bisson), was published in 1979 and is followed by this selected Urban Affairs & Country Matters.
After teaching Canadian Literature at Ottawa University and Algonquin College in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Mike ran his own editorial firm Creative Consulting Incorporated for over a decade.
He has edited novels, memoirs and poetry for local writers since retiring as editor of the former Carp Valley Press six years ago.
Mike rocks in Centretown, Ottawa.
Mike Heenan BA, BJ, MA
Wordsmith~On~Call
1-613-230-4640
mikeheenan@rogers.com
www.oiw.ca