Reconstructions
Dedicated to Sini –
the one who holds it all together,
and to our greatest works so far,
Lumi and Luca.
Reconstructions
‘The Troubles’ in Photographs and Words
Poems & Words by Steafán Hanvey
Photographs by Bobbie Hanvey
First published in 2019 by
Merrion Press
An imprint of Irish Academic Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© Steafán Hanvey & Bobbie Hanvey, 2019
Words © Steafán Hanvey
Photographs © Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, Massachusetts
Courtesy of the Trustees of Boston College
Editor: Desmond C. Fitzgibbon
9781785372162 (Cloth)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Graphic Design: Amanda / Creanda Oy and Steafán Hanvey
Interior design by www.jminfotechindia.com
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro 11.5/15
Jacket front: PIRA Bomb in Belfast city centre. Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives (MS2001.039),
John J. Burns Library, Boston College.
Jacket back: RUC officers from Clogher station with Sarah Primrose.
Photographic title: bh012536
Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives (MS2001.039), John J. Burns Library, Boston College.
Contents
All Key-Holders Attend … (The Devil’s in the Retail)
Plan B (Unravelling Night)
Gotcha!
An Undertaking
Mongrel Tongue (Between You, Be It!)
The Most Trying of Colours (The Trickler)
Carson-Parson
Easter 1974
Longley’s Lists
Perspective (Another Day in Paradise)
Trigger Treat
The Way of Them
Though I Walk in the Valley …
Proxy (Ghost in the Machine)
The Ninth Hole
17 (Cause to Grieve)
Photographic Credits
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR RECONSTRUCTIONS
‘Reconstructions is a wondrous outburst. Steafán Hanvey’s poems are an unrestrained response to the work of his father, the great Irish photographer Bobbie Hanvey. They are bold improvisations on his themes of conflict and community. These heartfelt refractions find their own shape. They are nobly dishevelled, and they cry out to be read.’
Michael Longley
‘This unique and heady blend of documented violence and photographic memory poses timely questions for present social understanding of the way we were. [Its] drama and tragicomic wit ... is both potent and devastating ....’
Medbh McGuckian
‘Authentic, innovative and keenly honed prose poetry ... An astonishing and visceral work that strikes clean to the often-dark but always-shining heart of Northern Ireland. A heady combination of words that set the pictures alight.’
Billy O’Callaghan
‘Steafán Hanvey was eyewitness to the genesis of so many of his father’s famous photographs, and it is obvious that the father’s iconic work has lain in the darkroom of the son’s memory and imagination, waiting to be developed into prose-poems of poignancy and power, showcased now in Reconstructions, a stunning symbiosis of word and image.’
Adrian Rice
We did not write in Yeats’s shadow, as some would have it, but in the lighthouse beam of his huge accomplishment.
– Michael Longley
Acknowledgements
This book’s making wasn’t entirely of my own doing – far from it. My darling Sini must take the lion’s share of the credit for ensuring I got this book over the line.
