Over the last 40 years, as a writer of all trades – radio, TV, theatre, novels – and master of not so many, the one writing area I’ve never attempted is poetry. That omission has now been semi-rectified with my new book Fail Again Fail Even Better – The Struggles of An Obscure Irish Poet.
I say semi-rectified because although the work delves into the world of justifiably ignored but doggedly persistent Galway-born poet Bosco Helly, none of his poems make an appearance in the actual book. Which is probably just as well. As a poet, he’d be more William McGonagall than William Butler Yeats, but that hasn’t stopped him releasing nearly 40 volumes of poetry in over three decades. However, Bosco has now decided to complete his final book, a career overview of new and selected poems, to be published by occasionally-tax-compliant businessman-publisher Ambrose Corscadden of Unputdownable Books.
Bosco has lived most of his life in Dublin. His socialising reads like an updated version of Anthony Cronin’s Dead as Doornails, but with more exorbitant drink prices and a distinct dearth of genii. For Behan, Kavanagh and O’Nolan insert Reardon, Talbot and Kissane.
First-time novelist Felix Reardon, at 78, is Ireland’s oldest emerging writer, whose literary agent has just sold the worldwide rights of his new book for an undisclosed two-figure sum. Actor Conor Talbot is considered so difficult to work with that in acting circles, his nickname is C Difficile. He spends his days blacklisting theatre directors and fantasises about inflicting grievous bodily harm upon dramaturgs. Movie critic and filmmaker Peadar Kissane’s one movie, a 2001 crime drama Direct Retribution, received an overall 8 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The book also examines how financially demanding it is to try and sustain a life of creativity in present-day Dublin. Bosco labours continually to make ends meet. Somehow, he survives by doing that one thing everybody in the arts seems to do these days. As he says himself: “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach become walking tour guides.”
When money issues become particularly acute he does comfort himself with the fact that, at least, in this country, we have an organisation called the Arts Council that potentially funds artists. Although, after 27 years of submitting applications, he has never actually received a bursary. Back in 2005, he was convinced he was in with a great chance to receive some financial support when he badly needed the time and space to work on his new poetry collection, Time and Space, which was actually about time and space. But those pampered popinjays in Merrion Square overlooked him. Again.
I must admit to channelling some of my own experiences as a writer into the book. One time, I was about to commence a reading in a library. Five people had turned up. They were two elderly Swedes, having stepped in from the rain, a middle-aged woman with her own unique fashion sense - punk Amish - and a young Australian couple. As the librarian began to introduce me, the young Australian couple and the middle-aged woman stood up and walked out. Five minutes later, as I had just finished reading the first extract, one of the Swedes began to suffer from a transient ischaemic attack and an ambulance had to be called.
Needless to say, I didn’t sell many books on that particular occasion. In fact, statistically it has been proven that many struggling writers have suffered from back problems and incipient hernias over the years, as they lug their rucksacks of broken dreams and surplus books to libraries the length and breadth of Ireland, hoping to make a sale or two, only to be given short shrift and dollops of thrift by a disinterested public.
Famed English literary critic and writer Cyril Connolly once wrote: “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” Bosco Helly adheres stringently to the first part of that quote. Sales of his books have always been somewhere between negligible and non-existent.
Over the years, in desperation, he has devised certain schemes to boost sales figures. A recent strategy had him furtively placing one of his slim volumes on a shelf in Hodges Figgis and scrawling a fake staff review on a little white card underneath: “Love the work of this poet. A sumptuous, moving evocation of the human spirit. Such breathtaking simplicity entwined with a shuddering profundity and beating heart – Chloe."
In fact, Bosco excels at writing reviews of his own work. Any time a new collection of his poems is released, he always has reviews at the ready for his seven friends who are verified customers of Amazon. But, over the years, non-Bosco authored reviews of his work adopt a more critical tone. One of his early volumes was described in this newspaper as a “masterclass in pointlessness”. Still, looking back on his long career, it was one of the better reviews.
Looking to the future, however, Bosco now sees this decades-long public denigration as a positive. In this epoch of rapid Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, none of the AI companies are remotely interested in copying any of his oeuvre to train their AI models. If he’d been a success all along, grand literary larceny would have occurred, but because he’s spent his life failing again and failing even better, Bosco Helly will never have to worry about such matters.
Fail Again Fail Even Better – The Struggles of an Obscure Irish Poet, by Karl MacDermott, published by Troubador Publishing, is out now. It will be launched by Frank McNally in the Georgian room of The Teachers Club, Parnell Square West, on Thursday, November 6th, at 7pm.
