I was a rebel, boy! Cork poet’s reflections on his childhood

WHILE poet Theo Dorgan has never kept a diary, he says he was “taken aback” by how much he remembered when the poems in his latest collection, Once Was A Boy, started to appear on the screen and in notebooks.

The book was launched this week at the Cork city library as the One City, One Book for 2024.

It was clear that this son-of-Cork - who lives in Dublin but says he never left his native city, he just lives elsewhere - is much respected and loved. There was a big turn-out for the launch, with Lord Mayor Cllr Kieran McCarty paying tribute to Theo.

The boy from Redemption Road on Cork’s north side must have been a bit precocious. He promised himself that he would remember what went on as a schoolboy.

“When I began to notice what was happening, like kids being bullied and so on, I think I wanted to remember so I could tell their story.

“I learned to read at the age of four, self-taught at the beginning and then obviously at the convent (St Vincent’s Convent).”

Theo went on to the North Monastery, followed by UCC, where he lectured and tutored before becoming involved in the establishment of the Triskel Arts Centre where he was literature officer.

With his close friend, Mick Hannigan, Theo re-founded the Cork International Film Festival and went on to become director of Poetry Ireland.

In 2000, he was elected to Aosdána and served on the Arts Council for five years. He is also an essayist, a documentary maker and has written about his sailing adventures. Theo came up with the idea for The Great Book Of Ireland and was one of its editors.

The eldest of 15 children (there were originally 16 in the family but one died at a very young age), Theo is blessed with a good memory.

He points out: “We forget sometimes how ferociously attentive children are. 

We knew the teachers we could trust and the ones we couldn’t. Some of that was lore passed down from older brothers or neighbours.

“Also, because there was so little in our worlds, what went on got all our attention. If you’re trapped in a classroom day in, day out, you study the teacher more minutely that you do your mother or father. We are born with ferocious attentiveness.”

Growing up, Theo visited the library twice a week to borrow history books, sci-fi, thrillers and ‘Mills and Swoon’ books (as he jokingly puts it) “for the ma.”

He was also a fan of the Biggles and Just William books, and was “drunk on words.” His father, who worked in Dunlops for 32 years, had a subscription to the Companion Book Club.

“There were all sorts of mad things at home like books on the first iteration of the SAS (Special Air Service) during World War II. There was a book on Everest by Edmund Hillary. I was reading everything.

I used to get a pineapple bar every Wednesday to read comics that a boy’s auntie Sheila used to buy for him.

For Theo, writing essays in class felt like being in “a safe space” with everything calm and silent. Was it otherwise unsafe?

“You’re talking about the ’50s and ’60s. You never knew when you were going to get hit. A 6ft man hitting an eight-year-old child was wrong. I’m sick of people I was at school with saying ‘it never did me any harm’. course it did. I saw fellows being beaten simply because they didn’t understand something.”

Theo says he was “constantly” beaten at school. Did it give him a fear of authority?

“No, but it gave me a fear of violence. It made me very aware of situations that might turn violent.”

School made Theo “unable to trust authority” because of the injustices he witnessed.

“I learned very early on to question authority. I became a rebel, day one. I remember going into secondary school and a brother said to me: ‘You have a bold spirit and I’ll break it before you leave this school’. I’m looking at this guy thinking, ‘No you won’t.’ But it was going to be rough. 

But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

In his early teens, instead of going to Sunday Mass, Theo and Mick Hannigan would buy The Sunday Times or The Observer on alternate weeks and lap up the likes of Dilys Powell, writing about cinema. “It was a huge education, a time when the Sunday papers were quality.”

Theo was born “into the paperback revolution. I could buy a Penguin classic for half a crown in Easons and the Fontana Modern Masters. It was the first iteration of the internet.”

He is very grateful to have been a beneficiary of free education, initiated in this country by Donogh O’Malley as a Fianna Fáil minister for education.

Theo was 21 when his mother died. His father died eight years later. Asked how his parents coped financially with such a big brood, Theo says: “The two salvations were the children’s allowance and the credit union. 

My mam was one of the first people involved in setting up Blackpool credit union. That was revolutionary for the poor.

Theo says his beloved Dubliner wife, the poet Paula Meehan, would move to Cork in the morning. But it could be problematic for him as it would take him two hours to cross Patrick Street, what with knowing every second person and stopping for chats.

“I love Cork though. It’s the mother of my first mind,” says Theo.