East Belfast schoolgirls write an ode to their city’s ‘nicer side’

Wouldn't it be great for Van Morrison to hear Taylor Blackstock and her classmates chorally reciting Song of Ashfield, muses the 13-year-old schoolgirl – or even for Morrison to try the song himself?

After all, Taylor and her Year Nine classmates from Ashfield Girls’ School have written a poem that beautifully evokes their homeplace of east Belfast, a part of town that is also home to Morrison and is key to much of his music.

Taylor’s mother, Elaine, is the “biggest fan of Van Morrison that there is”, so it’s not surprising that the girls’ poem contains a reference to Cyprus Avenue, the leafy street off the Newtownards Road that inspired Morrison’s great song of adolescent yearning and love.

The Ashfield girls made their own journey into the mystic, taking their inspiration from an ancient Irish poem, The Song of Amergin, and from the Donegal poet, writer and broadcaster Frank Galligan.

For years, Galligan has has been visiting schools around Ireland, inspiring children to love poetry and to compose their own verse as part of projects run by Poetry Ireland and the Pushkin Trust.

Song of Ashfield references numerous landmarks and people who have the stamp of east Belfast. In the process, the girls from this predominantly Protestant and unionist part of Belfast were exposed – most for the first time – to the Irish language.

‘Birth of Song’

Galligan used The Song of Amergin, written about 1,000 BC, as the template for Song of Ashfield. "I read it to them in Irish and then in translation, and used it as a spark so that they could express their perceptions of east Belfast," he says.

“Amergin literally means ‘Birth of Song’ and he was a Milesian king who ousted the Tuatha Dé Danann. I think the girls effectively captured their city and beyond in their poem.”

In old Irish the poem runs: “Am gáeth i muir ar domni / Am tond trethan i tír / Am fúaim mara / Am dam secht ndírend,” which translates as: “I am a wind in the sea / I am a sea-wave upon the land / I am the sound of the sea / I am a stag of seven combats.”

Galligan paid three visits to the class to oversee the development of the poem. “The girls worked collaboratively, coming up with the various ideas and lines. Not only were the girls open to the language but they were curious about it, but that is no surprise,” says Galligan, who feels certain that young people don’t have the hang-ups some adults are lumbered with. “The one thing I’ve learned going to schools is that children are children until adults get their hands on them.”

“It was really mind-blowing how we could find different ways to view Belfast,” says Freya Hill (13). “Instead of the dark side we could look at the good side, the nicer side of Belfast.”

The girls gave a choral reading of their poem in the Skainos centre on the Lower Newtownards Road, with their parents and others in attendance. On the night, poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill also read her own work in Irish, and other students delivering English translations.

The girls' teacher Suzanne Simpson says the overall experience instilled in them a pride in their place and in their work and a new way of looking at poetry. "They learned that it's a lot more than what rhymes with cat, mat and hat.

“I think it also helped them to realise that east Belfast was a place to be proud of. I am not sure if it was part of their consciousness up to that point.”

Galligan, who is from Glencolmcille in the Donegal Gaeltacht, says that working on Song of Ashfield helped to reawaken in him his own love for the Irish language. "I was fairly much a native speaker when I was wee, but after five years in college, not only did I not speak it but I hated it because of its compulsory nature. So I had to love the language again and to be confident in it again. I would have been very wary of it being hijacked politically, because that would never be a comfort zone with me."

Galligan is also very much taken with Taylor Blackstock’s idea that maybe Van Morrison, who on his 70th birthday on August 31st will be performing on Cyprus Avenue, might take a look at the poem that celebrates the area he has celebrated. “I’d love Van the Man to get his hands on it; imagine what he could do with it.”

SONG OF ASHFIELD

I am the school bell that peals in Avoniel

I am CS Lewis exploring my wardrobe

I am the crepes in St George’s Market on Saturday morning

I am the ghost in Scrabo Tower

I am a tick-tock in the Albert Clock

I am the fireworks display in the Odyssey

I am the gills on the Salmon of Knowledge in the Lagan

I am Cavehill, where the harsh winds blow

I am the oil dripping on to the boats in the shipyard

I am the granite in the Mourne Mountains, covered in a haunting mist

I am a neighbour of Van the Man’s on Cyprus Avenue

I am Madame George going south on North Street

I am the club swung by Rory McIlroy on Sunday afternoon

I am the lace on the boot of George Best

I am the lost suitcase at George Best Airport

I am the bird following the plane’s vapour trail

I am the smell of cinnamon at Christmas at the City Hall

I am a mashed Comber spud with gravy

I am the unsolved mystery in Mount Stewart

I am the Titanic slipping down an April sea

I am an iceberg floating in my memory

We are Samson and Goliath

The yellow cranes waiting for our ship to return

I am Belfast

Belfast is me.