The collected writings of Ennis’ lost poet

IN Lewisham in Kent, there is a street called Dermody Road and a housing estate called Dermody Gardens. Both places are named after Ennis-born poet Thomas Dermody, monuments to the man who died aged just 27 in a dilapidated hovel close by in 1802.

Despite Dermody’s fame, and infamy, in the 18th century, his talents have been almost forgotten through the passing of time. Now, lecturer and author Dr Michael Griffin is hoping his new book exploring the life and works of the child prodigy will become another monument to the poet.
A critical edition of The Selected Writings of Ennis Poet Thomas Dermody (1775 – 1802) was officially launched recently in conjunction with the Merriman Summer School.

Dr Griffin told The Clare Champion, “With this book, I wanted to give a sense of this important figure somewhat lost in the mists of time. I think he is somebody worthy of our attention in the present day. I believe Dermody sits alongside people like Brian Merriman as one of Clare’s great poets of the late 18th century.”

This book is almost a decade in the making, with Dr Griffin first reading Dermody in 2003. Along the way, he has received assistance from now retired county librarian Noel Crowley, Ennis Town Council and Clare Local Studies Centre.

“Dermody is one of those people I think that posterity hasn’t been very kind to,” Dr Griffin explained. “He was very famous in his own time and a lot of great figures of the day were very impressed by him, although they were also very wary of some of his more intemperate habits. He was really famous as a drinker and a desolute character, I suppose that went with the territory during the Romantic period. And his lifestyle told against him in the end.”

“I wanted to resurrect him because I think that given the life he lived, and the necessities of making a bit of money for himself just to get by, he wrote poems sometimes just to flatter his patrons. And a lot of that stuff wasn’t very good. But what I have done is sort of cut away a lot of the dross basically and retrieve some of his best material. This is a selected work, rather than a complete work, because I wanted to put together a collection of his best work so that his reputation can be boosted.”

Dr Griffin first became aware of Dermody’s poems while looking into the work of Oliver Goldsmith. “I became quite interested in Irish poets that were influenced by him and then I came across Thomas Dermody. I became very interested in the fact he was a poet from Ennis, I’m from Shannon and I have family in Ennis. I think he is an aspect of the town’s literary history that hasn’t been properly investigated.”

The book not only looks at Dermody’s poetry but also his life. “I decided to try and situate him in terms of the culture that produced him. I looked at his educational background and also the beginnings of the print culture and the newspapers in Ennis in the 1770s and 1780s. These newspapers were coming into existence and there were the beginnings of a poetic culture in English. A lot of people would have been passing around manuscripts in Irish at the time but nobody would be famous for writing poetry in English. I think Dermody was exposed to that through the innovations of the newspaper culture.”

Dermody’s father, Nicolas, was a teacher of the classics in Ennis where he established a small school in Church Street, now Abbey Street. “Before he took to the bottle, Nicholas was well respected as a Greek and Latin scholar. At the age of nine, Thomas became his teaching assistant and within a year, he had already composed a great deal of poetry and was a prodigious translator. However, the fact that he had also begun to mix with his father’s drinking clique suggests he was equally prodigious in his drinking.”

Dermody left home for Dublin after the death of his mother and brother, aged just 10-years-old. “He resolved to show his talent in Dublin and he was recognised almost immediately by some of the leading figures in Dublin as a child prodigy. They all sought to take him under their wing, until they ultimately realised what a troublemaker he could be. Part of the story of his life was his ability to acquire patronage and then to lose it,” said Dr Griffin.

After alienating his patrons with both his behaviour and radical politics, he joined the British army where he fought against the French and was injured on the battle field.

Retiring from the British army in his 20s, he moved to London to seek literary fame. “He sought more patronage and support on the basis of everything he had done so far. But he was already beginning to decline at this stage. I wouldn’t say this was the period that produced his best poetry, even though he published quite a lot.”

According to Dr Griffin, “He wrote his best stuff really around the age of 18. What I tried to do with this anthology was foreground that material, particularly the poems he wrote while living in Offaly called The Killeigh Cycle, all about the parish of Killeigh and the lively, boisterous behaviour of the ordinary people around town. They are very interesting poems about drinking and conviviality before that particular aspect of his life told against him.

“With this book, I wanted to show the trajectory of his career, beginning with his tremendous promise and in some ways that was compromised by his drinking and also by the politics of his patrons. They didn’t necessarily want him to write anything too radical or about low subjects, even though he had a great talent for writing witty verse about the life of the tavern and his drinking companions. I would suggest this is some of his best stuff.

“There is quite a subversive tone to some of his poetry and a radical edge that got lost, I think, in his later life but the purpose of this selection is to recover that.

“He was doing something quite different, setting out in a new direction writing in English. And in trying to imitate some of the great poets of the time, his voice was a bit compromised. But I think he was trying to hone his craft and he died so young that he didn’t get a chance to develop his own individual or unique voice. There are flashes of brilliance and ingenuity there that I think speak of this great lost talent.”

Dr Griffin said he is “constantly surprised” Dermody is not better known. He is hopeful this book will do something to change that. “One of the things that struck me was he died in a wretched hovel in Lewisham. Near where he died, there is a Dermody Road that backs onto a housing estate called Dermody Gardens. I was struck that there was this geographical monument to his existence in London but there isn’t any corresponding monument to his life in Ennis.

“In a way, this selection is my attempt to create some sort of monument to his career. But I think it is possible somewhere down the line that we could have something here. There are various statues to Brian Merriman and places dedicated to him. Somewhere down the line we might have a lane or road dedicated to Tom Dermody.”

Dr Michael Griffin’s A Critical edition of the Selected Writings of Ennis Poet Thomas Dermody (1775 – 1802) published by Field Day will be available in bookshops in September.