Terence Winch: Craic-Head Poetry

  O n Easter Monday of 1916, 150 or so Irish rebels took armed action against their British rulers, seizing the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin. After a week of fighting, they were defeated by the thousands of British troops arrayed against them; but the Easter Rising ultimately led to Irish independence from the mighty British Empire. Given the musical and literary traditions of the Irish, it is no surprise that the rebellion also gave rise to poems, songs, movies, and books. In fact, Patrick Pearse , one of the leaders of the Rising, was himself a poet. Probably the best-known of the poems to have been inspired by the conflict is William Butler Yeats 's “Easter 1916.” Several of poem's memorable phrases continue to echo more than a hundred years later:  Easter 1916 I I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered aw...

                                              Ed Cox & Michael Lally, ca. 1973, photo by Jesse Winch I started working a full-time office job on April Fool’s Day, 1985, just six months shy of turning 40, after having made my living for many years playing traditional Irish music, teaching, and picking up whatever writing and editing gigs I could get. Now, suddenly, I would be joining the herd, riding the rush-hour subway morning and night, living out my own perpetual Groundhog Day, all of which I contemplated with dread and angst. So I established one rule for myself as a way of preserving my creative life: I would always say yes to getting together with other writers and artists, whether for lunch or a drink after work. That rule remained in effect for the entire 24 years of my 9-to-5 stint. Back in those early dark days of gainful employment, the tw...

                          National Museum of the American Indian, July 2005. Photo by Terence Winch A fter making my living for many years as a musician and free-lance writer/editor, I got a job with the Smithsonian in 1985, spending my last 17 years there as Head of Publications at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington before retiring in 2009. It was definitely exciting to have had a role in bringing this museum to life, especially during the era leading to the opening of the new building on the National Mall in 2004. It’s a unique place—not without its flaws and problems, of course—that everyone should check out when visiting DC.  Though I did not become an expert in Native literature, over the years I became familiar with some of the Indian world’s leading writers. Kiowa novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday, who won a Pulitzer in 1969 for House Made of Dawn , was a not infrequent visitor to the mu...

  photo above: AOH All-Accordion band, ca. 1955; Terence Winch, front row, far right; Jesse Winch, 3rd from right; Felix Dolan, 2 nd from left; for a history of the band, with most members in this photo identified, see Hugh O’Rourke’s NY Irish History Journal article . W hen I was a boy growing up in an Irish immigrant household in the Bronx, March 17th was second only to December 25th in its potent mix of religion, magic, and celebration. We'd wait for the air-mail letter from our relatives in Galway to arrive and we'd carefully remove from it the little sprig of shamrock plucked from the soil of Holy Ireland and shaken free in the Bronx. We'd go to mass in the morning, with everyone singing the beautiful hymn, "Hail Glorious St. Patrick." And, as a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians Division 9 All-Accordion Band, along with my father and brother Jesse, we would march up 5th Avenue in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, something I did 11 years in a row. ...