James Simmons (poet)

James Simmons (1933-2001). Courtesy Gallery Press.

James Simmons (14 February 1933 - 20 June 2001) was a Northern Irish poet, literary critic and songwriter.

Life

Simmons was born into a middle-class Protestant family in Derry. He attended Campbell College] in Belfast before moving to the University of Leeds to read for a degree in English.

He returned to Northern Ireland to teach at Friends' School, Lisburn, for 5 years.His final foreign excursion was a position at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, where he worked for 3 years. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1968, accepting a position at the recently-opened New University of Ulster in Coleraine, where he remained until his retirement in 1984.

When Simmons returned to Northern Ireland he took part in The Belfast Group, together with such notables as Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon.

In 1968, with his nephew Michael Stephens, Simmons went on a tour of universities in England. When he returned to Ireland, he established The Honest Ulsterman, the most important Irish literary journal of the next 35 years (Citation needed). Simmons served as the editor for 17 of the first 19 issues; he then passed control of the magazine onto a series of younger editors. The Honest Ulsterman published a series of more than 30 poetry chapbooks, including the first collections of work by Paul Muldoon ("Knowing My Place"), Michael Foley ("The Acne and the Ecstasy"), and Michael Stephens ("Blues for Chocolate Doherty"). Members of the Belfast Group frequently published in The Honest Ulsterman.

Throughout his career Simmons wrote and performed exquisitely provocative, yet hilarious and humane, songs about every aspect of contemporary life. In 1970 he founded a new platform for bringing these to a wider audience, the satirical revue - The Resistance Cabaret - with Garvin Crawford, Victor Thompson, David Templeton, Eithne Murphy, Jim Brown, Mike Graves, Jon Marshall and Heather Hutchinson. In varying line-ups, they performed their unique repertoire regularly at venues throughout Northern Ireland until 1976. His poetry collection, West Strand Visions, contains some of the repertoire.

He recorded 3 collections of his own songs - City & Eastern, Love In The Post, The Rostrevor Sessions - and produced a Resistance Cabaret album with the other members. He also set a number of Yeats' poems to music, which he released on tape cassette.

He married Laura Stinson. The couple had 5 children: Rachel, Sarah, Adam, Helen and Penelope. Near the end of his teaching career at the University of Ulster, Simmons and his first wife Laura divorced. He married Imelda Foley (Citation needed), the sister of Derry poet and fiction writer Michael Foley, and had a daughter, Anna. After this marriage to Imelda ended, he had a son Ben with his 3rd wife, fellow-poet Janice Fitzpatrick.

Simmons and Fitzpatrick started The Poets' House, initially in Islandmagee in co. Antrim, later in Falcarragh in co. Donegal.

Writing

Whereas John Hewitt, the Ulster poet whom Simmons called "the grandaddy of us all," ground out his truth by placing himself in the mortar and pestle of nature, Simmons ground his out by placing himself under a self-imposed public scrutiny. Using his own life for material, he explored his frailties in his poetry with the clinical detachment of a laboratory technician, the humour of a big soul, and the vulnerability of a lover. Perhaps his best epitaph is his own:

Hiding in humility,

In irony, and wit,

It would be very hard to prove

That Simmons is a shit

Recognition

Simmons won several prizes for his poetry including the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards.

Since his death Simmons' work has been increasingly marginalised - few anthologies include him - and a Collected Poems is yet to appear. His songs, however, continue to challenge and delight appreciative audiences of The Resistance Cabaret.

Publications

Poetry

• Ballad of a Marriage. Belfast: Festival / Queen's University of Belfast, 1966.
• Late, but in Earnest: Poems. London: Bodley Head, 1967.
• Ten Poems. Belfast: Festival, 1969.
• In the Wilderness, and other poems. London & Sydney: Bodley Head, 1969.
• Songs for Derry. Portrush, NI: Ulsterman, 1969.
• No Ties. Portrush, NI: Ulsterman, 1970.
• Energy to Burn: Poems. London: Bodley Head; 1971.
• No Land is Waste, Dr. Eliot. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Keepsake Press, 1972.
• The Long Summer Still to Come. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1973.
• At that Moment the Mucous Membrane.... Belfast: Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1973.
• West Strand Visions. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1974.
• Memorials of a Tour in Yorkshire. Belfast: Ulsterman, 1975.
• Judy Garland and the Cold War. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1976.
• Constantly Singing. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980.
• Work in Progress. Boston: Northeastern University, 1984.
• From the Irish. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1985.
• Poems, 1956-1986 (with introduction by Edna Longley). Dublin: Gallery Press / Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1986.
• Sex, Rectitude and Loneliness. Belfast: Lapwing, 1993.
• Outing to Port-a-Doris. London: Turret, 1993.
• Mainstream. Galway, Ireland: Salmon, 1995.
• Elegies. Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland: Sotto Voce Press, 1995.
• The Company of Children. Cliff of Mohers, Ireland: Salmon, 1999.
• Kill The Children (Belfast Bombing)

Non-fiction

• Sean O'Casey. London: Macmillan, 1983; New York: Grove Press, 1984.

Translated

• The Cattle Rustling: A retelling of The Tain, an ancient Irish saga (illustrated by Martyn Turner). Belfast: Fortnight Educational, 1991.

Edited

• Ten Irish Poets: An anthology. Cheadle Hulme, UK: Carcanet Press, 1974.
• Soundings: An annual anthology of Irish writing, 3. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1976.

Collected editions

• The Selected James Simmons (edited by Edna Langley). Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1978.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

• City and Eastern: James Simmons sings his own songs. Belfast: Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1971.

See also

James Simmons - The Lost Footage-0

James Simmons, Pleasant Joys of Brotherhood

• List of Irish poets

References

• McKenna, Bernard; Gonzalez, Alexander G. (Ed.) (1997), Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, ISBN 0313295573 
• Pegnall, Peter (2001-07-10), "Obituary", The Guardian 
• McCormack, W.J. (2001-07-13), "Obituary", The Independent 
• At Six O'Clock in the Silence of Things: A festschrift for James Simmons Belfast: Lapwing / Portmuck, Islandmagee, Co. Antrim, NI: Poets' House, 1993.

External links

Poems

• Poems by James Simmons at The Belfast Group (5 poems)

Prose

• '"The Recipe for all Misfortunes, Courage": A study of three works by Protestant authors'

Audio / video

• James Simmons at YouTube

About

• James Simmons obituary at The Guardian
• James Simmons obituary at The Independent
• James Simmons at Ricorso

Etc.

• The Poets' House