Life
1933-2001 [James Stewart Alexander Simmons]; b. 14 Feb., Londonderry
[Derry City]; ed. Foyle College, then Campbell College, Belfast; began
singing in his father’s bar in Portrush; worked in London and elsewhere
before taking a degree at University of Leeds, BA 1958; studied under
Geoffrey Hill, editing Poetry and Audience with fellow-students
Wole Soyinka and Tony Harrison; took teaching post at Friends’ [Quaker]
Grammar School, Lisburn, 1958-63; lectured at Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria, Nigeria, 1963-66; wrote and directed in collaboration with Harrison
Akin [var. Aikin] Mata, a version of Aristophanes
Lysistrata; won Eric Gregory Poetry Award, 1964; issued Late
But in Earnest (1967); appt. lect. in Drama and Anglo-Irish literature,
NUU 1968-86, in a department founded by Walter Allen and later headed
by Alan Warner and finally by Alaistair Thompson; fnd. ed. The
Honest Ulsterman, 1968-1972, originally as a ‘handbook for revolution’
with an introduction commending Paul Goodman (Growing Up Absurd,
&c.), and printed at the Regency Press; subtitle withdrawn under pressure
from the RUC; edited nineteen consecutive issues incl. early writing by
Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Frank Ormsby and Bernard MacLaverty and otherwise
marked by a wealth of contributions and the self-confidence of reviews;
issued In the Wilderness (1969); also Songs for Derry (1969);
recorded City and Eastern, and Love in the Post (LPs) in
the 1970s; issued Energy to Burn (1971); The Long Summer Still
to Come (1973); West Strand Visions (1974); ed. Ten Irish
Poets (1974); became first poetry reviewer of Books Ireland,
1976; issued Judy Garland and the Cold War (1976); winner of Cholmondeley
Poetry Award, 1977 [var. 1972]; also Irish Publishers’ Award; lit.
ed., Linen Hall Review and Fortnight Review;
issued Constantly Singing (1980); issued a study of Sean O’Casey
(1983); separated from his first wife Laura, 1984; m. Imelda Foley, with
whom a dg. Anna, c.1982; remained in Ballymoney as home father for some
years; writer in Residence, QUB, 1985-88; issued From the Irish
(1985); Edna Longley edited his Poems 1956-1986 (1986), winner
of Poetry Soc. Recommendation and Irish Publishers’ Award; gave readings
at Oxford Irish Festival, 1987; held
NI Arts Bursary; issued The Cattle Rustling, based on Táin
Bó Cuailnge with satirical lights on Provisional IRA, and performed
Lyric Theatre, Belfast (Jan. 1993); m. Janice Fitzpatrick-Simmons (b.
Boston, 1954), formerly Asst. Dir. at the Robert Frost Place, with whom
a son Ben (b. 1988); elected to Aosdána, 1989; fnd. with her The
Poet’s House at Portmuck, Islandmagee (Co. Antrim), 14 Dec. 1989,
offering degrees endorsed by Lancaster Univ.; curriculum actively supported
by Martin Mooney, Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, Carol Ann Duffy et al.;
building plans vetoed by Islandmagee Borough Council in April 1996, on
spurious charge of literary immorality with further planning objections
by the DoE, 1994; removed to Falcarragh, Co. Donegal, where courses were
offered by Simmons, Cathal Ó Searchaigh and others; issued The
Company of Children (1999), his last collection; suffered aneurism,
Dec. 1999; treated in intensive care ward, Beaumont Hosp. Dublin; object
of fund-raising campaign to meet medical expenses, organised by Eiléan
Ní Chuilleanáin and others; returned for convalescence to
Letterkenny Hospital before settling back at home in Falcarragh; d. 20
June; survived by third wife Janice; seven children. DIW DIL ORM FDA
HAM OCIL
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Poetry
Late But in Earnest (London: Bodley Head 1967); In the Wilderness and Other Poems (London: Bodley Head 1969); Energy to Burn (London: Bodley Head 1971); No Land is Waste, Dr Eliot (Belfast: Keepsake Press 1973) [var. 1972; ltd. edn. 300 copies]; with Paul Muldoon, Out of the Blue: A Selection of Poems and Songs (NI Arts Council 1974); The Long Summer Still to Come (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1973); West Strand Visions (Belfast: Blackstaff 1974), 72pp. [‘... to the memory of John Mullan, the poet’]; Judy Garland and the Cold War (Belfast: Blackstaff 1976); The Selected James Simmons, ed. Edna Longley (Belfast: Blackstaff 1978); Constantly Singing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1980); From the Irish (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1985). Poems, 1956-1986 [collected], intro. Edna Longley (Dublin: Gallery; Bloodaxe 1986); The Cattle Rustling [a version of Táin Bó Cuailgne] (Fortnight Educ. Trust 1992), 72pp.; Sex, Rectitude and Loneliness (Belfast: Lapwing Press 1993), 47pp.; Mainstream (Galway: Salmon Poetry 1995), 134pp. also Elegies (Sotto Voce Press 1995); The Company of Children (Galway: Salmon 1999), 103pp.
Drama, The Cattle Rustling, ill. Martyn Turner (Fortnight Educ. Trust 1992), 72pp., for schools; being a 2-act version of Táin Bo Cuailgne which ‘illuminates the tragedy and farce of Ireland’s heroic myths, highlighting the human side of mythmaking - and how we live on it still’; ‘Sex, Rectitude and Loneliness’ (Lapwing Poetry Pamphlets 1993), 47pp. [1-898472-01-7].
Miscellaneous, ed., The Honest Ulsterman [1st iss., infra]; ed. Ten Irish Poets (Cheshire: Carcanet Press 1974), 92pp. [infra]; ‘The Recipe of all Misfortunes, Courage’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, eds., Across the Roaring Hill, The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985); also ‘The Trouble with Seamus’, in Elmer Andrews ed., Seamus Heaney, Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan 1992), pp.39-66; contrib. to Dermot Bolger, ed., Letters from the New Island, 16 on 16: Irish Writers on the Easter Rising (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1988), 47pp., pp.23-25;
Discography, City and Eastern (Belfast: NI Arts Council 1971); Love in the Post (Coleraine: Poor Genius Records 1975); The Rostrevor Sessions (Rostrevor: Spring Records 1987). [3 LPs.] Also Resistance Cabaret (q.d.)
The Honest Ulsterman: A monthly handbook for a revolution, Number 1 (May 1968). CONTENTS, Editorial [2]; Stevie Smith, ‘A Soldier Dear to Us’ [7]; Brendan Kennelly, ‘The Stones’ [9], ‘A Man in Yellow Oilskin’ [10]; John D. Stewart, ‘Let Us Be Human’ [11]; John Hewitt, ‘From the Tibetan’ [14]; Derek Mahon, ‘Dying Art’, ‘Ecclesiastes’ [15]; John Hearsum, ‘The Running of Things’ [16]; W. Price Turner, ‘Full Supporting Programme’ [18]; Michael Stephens, Five Poems [19]; Interview with Roger McGough [23]; James Simmons, ‘After Donald Davie’, [25]; Michael Stephens, ‘Drugs v. Drink’ [26]; Peter Lewis, ‘A Tale of a Turd’ [28]; THEATRE: ‘Mary O’Malley and the Lyric Players Theatre’ [31]; James Simmons, ‘The Use of Histo’ [36]; W. Price Turner, ‘Procrastination’ [38]; REVIEW: Louis McNeice [39]; Gavin Ewart, Epitaph [43]; James Simmons, ‘New Song’ [44]; Thoughts For The Month [45]; Gavin Ewart, ‘Y.M.C.A’ [46]; ‘Irish Atheist’, James Simmons, ‘Two In The Cafeteria’ [47], Drawing by Colin Middleton; Price: 3/- 60 cents; Manuscripts to the Editor, The Honest Ulsterman, Main St., Castlerock, accompanied by stamped addressed envelope. Advertising: £13 per page; £7 half page; £4 quarter page. Payment On publication. The photograph of the Antrim Round Tower is from the library of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. Fabel [sic] Faber Ltd. lent us the photograph of Louis McNeice. Circulation: Michael Stephens. Advertising: Patrick Boyce. Printed by Regency Press, Belfast.
Contributions to Threshold, ‘Forrest Reid on Yeats’ (Winter 1977?), p.60-67 [‘I first came across Forrest Reid’s work in my teens in Derry when a girl friend lent me a battered Penguin copy of Peter Waring ... &c.’; see Forrest Reid, Rx.]; ‘Sean O’Casey, The Autobiographies’, Threshold, No. 33 (Winter 1983), pp.36-49; ‘A Boyhood in the Colony’, Threshold, No. 36 (Winter 1985/86), pp.68-78 [reprint under same title in Honest Ulsterman, No. 83, 1987].
Ten Irish Poets, ed James Simmons (Cheadle: Carcanet 1974), 92pp. CONTENTS: ‘Introduction’; Acknowls.; George Buchanan [‘Conversation with Strangers’; ‘A Wave of Joy’; ‘War-and-Peace’; ‘Philanthropy’; ‘The Animals’]; John Hewitt [‘An Irishman in Coventry’; ‘Gathering Praties’; ‘A Victorian Steps Out’; ‘O Country People’; ‘Because I Paced my Thought’; ‘The Scar’; ‘An Ulster Landowner’s Song’; ‘From the Tibetan’]; Padraic Fiacc [‘Dirge’; ‘First Movement’; ‘The Poet and the Night’; ‘The Other Man’s Wound’; ‘Alive Alive O’; ‘Gloss’; ‘The British Connection’; ‘The Black and the White’; ‘Enemies]; Pearse Hutchinson [‘Connemara’; ‘Lovers’; ‘Bright after Dark’; ‘A Rose and a Book for Sant Jordi’; ‘Fleadh Cheoil’; ‘A Man’; ‘The Nuns at the Medical Lecture’]; James Simmons [‘Ode to Blenheim Square’; ‘Join Me in Celebrating’; ‘A Good Thing’; ‘Husband to Wife’; ‘Letter to a Jealous Friend’; ‘Experience’; ‘Outward Bound’; ‘Old Gardener’; Me and the World’]; Michael Hartnett [‘The Person Nox Agonistes’; ‘The Poet as Black Sheep’; ‘Crossing the Iron Bridge’; ‘The Lord Taketh Away’; ‘The Night before Patricia’s Funeral ...’; ‘The Third Sonnet’; ‘A Small Farm’; ‘The Person as a Dreamer’; ‘All That is Left’]; Eileán ní Chuilleanáin [‘Early Recollections’; ‘Death and Engines’; ‘Evidence’; ‘The Apparition’; ‘The Second ‘Voyage’; ‘A Poem on Change’; ‘Ferryboat’; ‘Letter to Pearse Hutchinson’; ‘Swineherd’]; Michael Foley [‘Recruiting Song’; ‘Heil Hitler’; from ‘Instead of a Rose’; ‘The Fall of the Bedsitter King’; ‘O’Driscoll’; from ‘A la Recherche du Temps Perdu’; ‘Autumn Leaves’; ‘I Feel, These Days’; ‘Into the Breach’; ‘I’m Scared ...’ Sois Sage ...’]; Frank Ormsby [‘Business as Usual’; ‘Interim’; ‘Winter Offerings’; ‘In Great Victoria Street’; Floods’; ‘Dublin Honeymoon’; ‘Hair Horseworm’; ‘Three Domestic Poems’; ‘Onan’; ‘McQuade’; ‘Castlecoole’; ‘An Uncle Remembered’; ‘Virgins’]; Tom Matthews [‘Restless’; ‘The Singing Lady’; ‘Anton the Elephant Boy’; ‘Young Girl’s Diary’; ‘Robert Sat’; ‘The Cowboy Film’; ‘Tom’s Song’; ‘Geriatric’; ‘The Poet with Bad Teeth’; ‘Foolstop’; ‘L’Enfant Fatigue’; ‘Gustav the Great Explorer’; Notes on Contribs.
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Edna Longley, ‘Searching the Darkness: The Poetry of Richard Murphy, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, and James Simmons’ in Douglas Dunn, ed., Two Decades of Irish Writing (Cheadle: Carcanet 1975), pp.118-53.
Terence Brown, ‘Four New Voices, Poets of the Present, in Northern Voices; Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), pp.171-213.
Terence Brown, ‘Four New voices, Poets of the Present’, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Carcanet 1975), pp.171-213; (chiefly 186-90).
Terence Brown, ‘Poets and Patrimony, Richard Murphy and James Simmons’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, eds., Across the Roaring Hill, The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Blackstaff 1985), pp.182-95 (chiefly 190-end),
Edna Longley, introductions to The Selected James Simmons (Belfast: Blackstaff 1978) and Poems 1956-1986 (Gallery Press/Bloodaxe Books 1986).
Martin Mooney, ‘Still Burning, James Simmons in Conversation with Martin Mooney’, Rhineroceros, no.2 [n.d.], pp.101-22.
Thomas MacCarthy, ed., ‘James Simmons and Martin Luther in the Larne district’ [Festschrift for Simmons at 60] (Belfast: Lapwing [?]1993).
A. S. Knowland, ‘The Thoughtful Songs of James Simmons’, in Elmer Andrews, ed., Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan 1996), pp.264-85.
Philip Hobsbaum, ‘The Belfast Group: A Recollection’, Éire-Ireland 32, 2&3 (Summer/Autumn 1997), pp.173-82.
Peter Pegnall, ‘Poet Who Nurtured the Writers of Ireland North and South’, Guardian (10 July 2001), [q.p.].
Martin Mooney, ‘James Simmons: An Appreciation’, Fortnight, 397 (July/aug. 2001), p.33 [with photo-port.].
Terence Brown, Northern Voices (1975), p.191).
Frank Ormsby calls Simmons ‘a refromer or secular evangelist who is firmly on the side of life and freedom’, his work pitting ‘theory against personal experience and human fallibility, especially in the areas of love, sex, marriage, the family, growing old.’ (Intro., Poets from the North of Ireland, 1979; quoted in Obituary, )
Anthony Cronin greeted the Selected James Simmons as ‘my book of the year ... he is one of the three or four most exciting poets to have emerged from any quarter of Ireland, Scotland, England, or Wales during the last twenty years or so ..., Blackstaff catalogue, 1980.
Patricia Craig, ‘History and its Retrieval in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry: Paulin, Montague and Others’, in Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, ed., Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan 1996), (pp.116-17.)
Katie Donovan, interview with James Simmons and Janice Fitzpatrick: ‘The Hedgeschool of Portmuck: Are creative writing courses a scam or an inspiration? The Poets House in Antrim impresses the initially skeptical [KD]’ (Irish Times 8 August 1995).
Brian Lynch notices Elegies, with works of other poets, Irish Times (24.2.1996), p.8.
The Irish Times, Obituary Notice (30 June 2001).
Martin Mooney, ‘James Simmons 1933-1001: An appreciation’, Fortnight, No. 397 (July/Aug. 2001), p.33.
P J. Kavanagh, writes an appreciation of James Simmons, in "Bywords" (Times Literary Supplement, 1 Feb. 2000).
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects from Energy to Burn, ‘The Silent Marriage’; from The Long Summer Still to Come, ‘Didn’t He Ramble’; from Poems 1956-1986, ‘Ulster Says Yes’ [1357-59; 1432-33, BIOG & WORKS [as above].
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, ed., Soft Day, a miscellany of contemporary Irish Writing (Notre Dame/Wolfhound 1980), ‘What Will You Do, Love?’; ‘Cavalier Lyric’; ‘The End of the Affair’; ‘Stephano Remembers’. QUOTE, West Strand Visions includes Peasant Quality, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek invective against rural nationalism, ‘Possessed by three unities, they will never escape-/ignorance, poverty, hate - they definitely are/stylish, passionate, and great shape.’
Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Place (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), incls. "The Conservative" [poem in 5 pts.], pp.196-200.
Hibernia Books (1996) lists At Six O’Clock in the Silence of Things: Festschrift for James Simmons (Lapwing/Poet’s House 1993).
Tom Kinsella: Michael Smith, reviewing Derval Tubridy, Thomas Kinsella, The Peppercannister Poems (2000), in The Irish Times (27 Jan. 2001), notes that James Simmons, inter alia, resented Thomas Kinsella’s ‘interfering’ in a Northern ‘situation’ with his response to Bloody Sunday Butcher’s Dozen.
Derek Mahon dedicated “Afterlives"” to James Simmons; the poem concludes with the the sentiment, ‘What middle-class twits we are / To imagine for one second / That our privileged ideals / Are divine wisdom, and that the dim / Forms that kneel at noon/In the city not ourselves’, and ending, ‘Perhaps if I had stayed behind / And lived it bomb by bomb / I might have grown up at last / And learnt what is meant by home.’ (Selected Poems, 1991, pp.50-51; and note ‘cunts’ for ‘twits’ in the first book-printed version.)
Brendan Kennelly quotes “Claudy: a Ballad”, Simmon’s poem on the IRA bombing at the town of that name, in ‘Poetry and Violence’, in Joris Duytschaever and Geert Lernout, eds., History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature [Conference of 9 April 1986; Costerus Ser. Vol. 71] (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988), 5-27; pp.13-14.
John Montague dedicates the poem “Fairy Fort” the Ben Simmons, the son of James Simmons and Janice Fitzpatrick: ‘As an immense privilege / he is brought down / to the underground hall / where all the giants / have been slumbering / since Time’s beginning [...] Rascally, he cannot resist / a boastful hallowing [...]’ (Smashing the Piano, Gallery Press, 1999, p.16.)
Michael Longley dedicates a poem, “White Water”, to James Simmons in his collection Snow Water (Cape 2004): ‘We should have been fat jolly poets / In some oriental print [...]’.
Letterhead: Letterhead of The Poet’s House in 1995 cites Janice Fitzpatrick and Janes Simmons; 80 Portmuck Road, Portmuck, Islandmagee, Co. Antrim, BT40 3TP, Northerin Ireland; also Advisory Panel: John Farleigh, Dr James Hawthorne CBE, Medbh McGuckian, Joan Newman, Frank Ormsby (Northern Ireland); Prof. David Craig, Pamela Gillilan (England); Thomas McCarthy,Gabriel Rosenstock [Chairman of Poetry Ireland] (Ireland); Dr. David Keller, Dr. Sherod Santos, Jean Valentine (USA).
Crying Game: Simmons reviews Neil Jordan’s new novel in Spectator (Jan. 1995), and professes to be unable to read it; condemns The Crying Game as remake of O’Connor’s Guest of the Nation, with black and transvestite thrown in; also reviews Poetry (Gabriel Fitzmaurice, Paul Muldoon, and John Hughes) in Linen Hall Review (Autumn 1993) and dismisses Francis Stuart parenthetically, the very old Francis Stuart ‘(whose novels I can’t stand)’, but quotes a full stanza of Berlin 1944; writes fulsomely of Muldoon as a genius of more than modest intelligence, ‘tricksy and teasy as well as brilliantly in touch with the surface of modern life’.
Irish Times (Obit.): Frank Ormsby called him ‘a reformer or secular evangelist who is firmly on the side of life and freedom’, his work pitting ‘theory against personal experience and human fallibility, especially in the areas of love, sex, marriage, the family, growing old.’ (Poets from the North of Ireland, 1979.)
Portmuck blues: refused planning application at Islandmagee due to objections of local councillors to the ‘sex on train’ theme of a poem in his collection Mainstream, sent anonymously to a councillor called Bobby McKee; UUP councillor Roy Beggs, former chair of NE Education and Library Board, proposed that the book should be banned in schools; Simmons, speaking from Galway, said that ‘it has been one of my lifelong ambitions to help release Ulster people from guilt and furtiveness over sex. The poem that he is talking about describes a married couple who make love - triumphing over the filth and dirtiness of the Northern Railways toilet to produce joy and happiness.’ He instanced a tradition stretching from Solomon to Sappho and from John Donne to Blake, Robert Burns, D H Lawrence, and James Joyce. Simmons is the grandson of Sir Frederick Simmons, a Presbyterian lord mayor of Derry; the poet’s house has four MA students from America, Scotland, and Ireland. (Irish Times, Sat. 20 April, Home News, p.5).
Warning issued: Elegies noticed in Books Ireland, First Flush (Feb. 1996, p.36), indicating that the editors were recently ‘warned off’ Simmons, an earlier reviewer in the journal, by a ‘not entirely literate letter from a clerical gentleman, which had of course the reverse effect.’
... this life: Note that Simmons reviewed Montague and Derek Mahon in a essay (Linen Hall Review, Spring 1994), pp.18-20. Mahon’s poem "Afterlives" was dedicated to him.
Zorba?: Kyle Magee, the ‘Zorba of the North’, in Michael Foley's novel The Road to Notown (1996), is thought to be based on Simmons.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)