Night On Hibernia Cover

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Night On Hibernia Back

Night On Hibernia

“Night on Hibernia is John Ennis’s first volume and it includes most of the poems that won the author the Patrick Kavanagh Award last year. Mr. Ennis obviously admires and has a poetic affinity with the ill-starred Hart Crane, that dazzling American poet who committed suicide in his early thirties.  Like Crane, John Ennis’s imagery is richly exuberant, yet firmly controlled; and, like Crane, the sea stimulates his imaginative powers.  The long poem – more than, say, 40 lines – is a considerable test of poetic stamina. Long poems, especially by those who are expert at the concentrated lyric, tend toward flatness and, more often than not pad along to a limp conclusion. Mr. Ennis gives us two successful long poems, both of them character studies, in which the pressure seldom slackens.  On the strength of Night on Hibernia, I should say that Mr. Ennis has definitely arrived”.

Robert Greacen, The Irish Press, 21 August 1976.

 

PATRICK KAVANAGH AWARD  1975

 

What the adjudicators said about John Ennis’ prize-winning collection: “Night on Hibernia”.

 

Brendan Kennelly:

“Usually, younger writers tend to give the impression of not being in full intellectual and imaginative control of what they are trying to say.   In the case of Mr. Ennis one is struck, reading Night in Hibernia, by precisely the presence of this kind of control, which is made manifest in his assured and adequate idiom, his congruous and frequently quite adventurous rhythms as well as in some of the most striking imagery I have seen for some time. To put it more simply, Mr. Ennis has at an early age for a poet developed a distinctive style. It is this which gives to his book its special feeling of unity. In most of his poems he tries to speak as fully and eloquently as possible. Yet the reader never notices any lack of restraint.

“Mr. Ennis has absorbed his influences well.  These influences range from Irish poets to American writers such as Hart Crane. Mr. Ennis is never at the mercy of his influences. He has mastered them and made them part of his own style.

“All in all, this is an accomplished, well finished book of verse, the assured expression of a developed sensibility. It certainly deserves a wide audience”.

 

John Jordan:

“There are no startlingly original themes in John Ennis’ verse.  The subjects have all, in the main, been treated before by Irish poets: the splendours and miseries of rural life, the world of the seminary, the emigrant’s boat, exile, above all perhaps, the Irish love-affair with death.

“What astonishes this reader is the relentless exclusion of sentimentality, without the destruction of tenderness.  One has the thrilling experience of encountering an imagination that has dominated its experience with no loss of urgency.  And almost always John Ennis’ language is adequate to his experience, sometimes spare, sometimes rich and allusive. It is as if the three great streams of Clarke, Kavanagh and Devlin, had at last come together in a young Irish poet”.

 

Maurice Harmon:

“The poetry of John Ennis commends itself by its freedom from those echoes from other writers that are usually found in the work of a young poet.  He has absorbed his literary masters so effectively that he speaks in his own voice, through an idiom and within a set of circumstances that seem natural and appropriate. That he is an ‘Irish’ poet is evident from his themes; that he is a good poet is evident from his mastery of means”.

CONTENTS

 

INTRODUCTORY:

NIGHT ON HIBERNIA

SARSFIELD’S GHOST

 

from    POEMS FOR DOROTHEA:

DOROTHEA

GIRL, BAR, SWAN

THE KNIGHTS

DEPORTED

KINGS CROSS, OLD LADY

MAD BOY, AND THAW

BRIGHT DAYS

 

from    ON VOCARI:

VOCARI

CLOUGH

THE LAKES

            ATLANTIC INLET

            THÉRÈSE

            PROFESSOR

            KNOCKERS OF MARCION

            REDUCTIO AD MAHOCKEY

            SGARÚINT NA GCOMPÁNACH

            ALLEGRI’S MISERERE

            SOUTHWARD IN MAY

                                                           

from    TRIBUTE TO ANCHISES:

            WHEEL CHAIR RIDE FOR ANCHISES

            VOICE UNDER THE ELM

            MÓINÍN

            GALAXY IN WHITE

            RUN, HERE, RUN

            OFFICIAL

            TO MARKET, TO MARKET

            OUT OF THE RUINS

            PATIENT

            BAD FRIDAY

            ALLEGRO MAESTOSO

            THE SUMMONS

            O RÖSCHEN ROT

            RELIQUIAE

            CUTIS OF GOLD

 

 

CONTENTS

Cont.

 

from    DIVIDERS, CUTTERBARS:

            THE FLOWER CHILDREN

            THE DARKENING FATHOMS

            HART CRANE

            DIVIDERS, CUTTERBARS

            HIBERNIA

 

 

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