Obituaries

Niall McDevitt obituary: Poet, activist, scholar and leading light of Irish literary scene in London

McDevitt fought injustice and oppression in his writing and campaigning, at one point helping to secure the release of a jailed Myanmar poet

Nial McDevitt died at a point when he was starting to receive wider recognition for his work as a poet and scholar.

Sat Oct 15 2022 - 00:00

Born: February 22nd, 1967

Died: September 29th, 2022

Niall McDevitt, Irish poet, Blakean, psycho-geographer, actor and literary activist, has died at his home on Portobello Road, in London. He was 55.

Born in Limerick, McDevitt moved to South Dublin as a child, where he attended Belvedere College and completed a degree in English at University College Dublin, before residing briefly in Scotland and then England, where he lived for more than 25 years.

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McDevitt’s poetry collections include b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Porterloo (International Times, 2013) and Firing Slits: A Jerusalem Colportage (2016, New Rivers Press). In his work as both poet and essayist, McDevitt consistently fought against injustice and oppression. He wrote about London and Ireland, the working class, the underclass, Jerusalem and Palestine, power and corruption. He was able to connect ancient mythology to the Elizabethans, romanticism to modernism, always through a unique lyric contemporariness. His main inspirations were William Blake, WB Yeats, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud.

He was able to help save Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s house in Royal College Street, London, as well as protect the land around William Blake’s grave

McDevitt’s activist concerns were also those of an internationalist. He worked as poetry editor for the International Times, and led on several successful campaigns, helping to release Saw Wai, a jailed Myanmar poet from Insein prison in Yangon. He was able to help save Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s house in Royal College Street, London, as well as protect the land around William Blake’s grave in Bunhill Fields from the threat of redevelopment.

In his poems, though the city muse was frequently London, he also wrote versions of Sumerian and Babylonian epics and participated in the Babylon Festival in Iraq in 2016. Though suspicious of mainstream coteries (”blimps”, he called them), McDevitt worked with the likes of Yoko Ono and John Peel and was praised by the musician Patti Smith. The poet Jeremy Reed said of McDevitt in b/w that he is a “luminous custodian of the great poetic mysteries. The shamanic poems are the thing itself.”

Arriving in London, McDevitt quickly absorbed himself into the Irish literary scene, becoming poet in residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith (1995-2009), curating many events which brought together the London-Irish community. As a self-styled “walking artist”, he organised literary walks on writers such as James Joyce and Yeats, which regularly attracted hundreds of followers. His William Blake walk in London was covered by the BBC’s The Poet of Albion radio broadcast and included among The Great British Walks by the author Nigel Richardson.

As a poet, he was renowned for the impressive recital of his poems, often accompanied by a bodhran drum or guitar (he could sing any number of Blake’s Songs)

During the Covid lockdown, McDevitt wrote and narrated on films made by the celebrated Dublin film director Sé Merry Doyle. These include The Battle Of Blythe Road (about Yeats’s time practising magic at in an “Isis Temple” in West London and his pugilist encounter with Aleister Crowley), and James Joyce ­– Reluctant Groom (about Joyce’s year living in Kensington). The Battle Of Blythe Road won the Special Award at the Portobello Film Festival in 2021.

Skin cancer

As a younger man, McDevitt acted in Neil Oram’s 24-hour play, The Warp, and starred in his friend Ken Campbell’s Pidgin Macbeth. As a poet, he was renowned for the impressive recital of his poems, often accompanied by a bodhrán drum or guitar (he could sing any number of Blake’s Songs). His final public appearance was the premiere of BlakeLand – William Blake and Thomas Paine at the Portobello Film Festival 2022 where, soon after, he succumbed to six years bravely battling the effects of skin cancer, which he caught by accident, so he felt, falling asleep on a beach during a hot day.

Part of the wider tragedy of McDevitt’s passing is that he had begun to achieve the recognition and success as a poet and scholar of poetry which many felt he had long deserved. His latest collection, London Nation, published in the month that the author died, is to be launched posthumously by New Rivers Press later this year.

McDevitt is survived by his mother Francis and his siblings Roddy and Yvonne, his partner and fellow artist, Julie Goldsmith, and her son Heathcote Ruthven.

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