Eclectia by Seamus ua Trodd: Guest poetry review from Richard Gibney

Richard Gibney, writer and editor, joins us today with a review of Seamus ua Trodd’s poetry collection Eclectria.

With its magnificent thematic breadth and awesome formal diversity, Seamus ua Trodd’s debut collection of poetry, Eclectia, features work that focuses on events in history alongside more personal pieces that capture transcendental moments of insight or clarity experienced by the poet himself.

Ua Trodd has been writing for more than forty years, and is aged nearly ninety. This slim tome of poems, containing almost sixty pieces of his best work written over the years, takes on such subjects as President Kennedy, the bombing of Hiroshima, the sinking of the Titanic, and 2019’s fire that devastated Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. Other pieces, meanwhile, capture the man’s own First Holy Communion, local league soccer matches in which he participated, other sports events such as Dublin City’s marathon, and his recent near-death, Covid-related experiences.

The poet himself is well-traveled, having given poetry readings in the UK, Canada, and elsewhere. He served as part of the UN peace-keeping mission in the Congo in the 1960s. Many of Eclectia’s poems are inspired by visits to the places about which he has written – the aforementioned Notre Dame cathedral a case in point. In ‘Trial By Flame’, he writes about how some of the structure remains intact:

Water-jets, like battle-swords,

give combat in the fray.

Slowly, bravely, make the blaze

give way.

Icons still of that proud past,

the western towers remain.

And they support the bells.

The Bells!

Recently refurbished,

live to speak for Notre Dame.

The poet’s echoing of the cathedral’s famous bell-ringing Hunchback is characteristic of the humour you’ll find throughout this inspired collection. Indeed, ua Trodd’s word choices, images, and references suggest an autodidact’s erudition while often being matchless in their propensity to be universally appreciated. Certain other poems, meanwhile, employ a vocabulary and turn-of-phrase which would more usually be confined to the poet’s native Irish Midlands, adding an esoteric quality to the pieces. Nevertheless, even strangers to Hiberno-English will garner an appreciation for ua Trodd’s judicious use of language and word choice.

You can find Eclectia by Seamus ua Trodd in paperback and Kindle.