Award winning poet Maurice Riordan visits Hazelwood College
5th Year Student Triona Sheehy reports on the visit of Maurice Riordan to Hazelwood
For many teenagers poetry readings can be intimidating places and as a result few get to experience poetry as the poet intended it to be heard. When Maurice Riordan, winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award, recently made a visit to our school there was an atmosphere of barely disguised excitement and uncertainty. The poet however, was completely at ease discussing poetry, both his own and that of other poets such as Patrick Kavanagh, Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas. He read from his own award winning collection, The Holy Land’, and listened as we, the students, gave our own opinions and interpretations of his verse. For many this was our first encounter with poetry outside of the set textbook. Maurice’s poetry is certainly alive and kicking. His poems are a homage to his late father who was, and still remains, his muse. They also have an immediacy of emotion that never lapses into sentimentality. His poetry was well received by all three groups from Transition Year, Leaving Cert 1 and 2, who attended the reading and afterwards debate raged about what was, in each person’s opinion, “the best bitâ€- an argument that no-one could possibly win.
