A Northern Ireland based priest and accomplished poet, who has
written over a hundred poems, has just published a CD chronicling his
life and work as a cleric.
The Rhythm of the Ordinary records Fr. Martin
Kelly’s boyhood in Bailieboro, Co. Cavan and his varied career
as a priest in Belfast and Portaferry, County Down.
The CD includes
biographical detail, Fr Kelly’s insight into life in Belfast during the
Troubles, and reflections on the New Testament.
It also includes 39 of 120 poems he has written over the last six
years that were inspired by four distinct stages of his life.
These
range from life as a boy in rural Cavan, the often strange events in a
priest's life, the Troubles in Belfast, and life in general. Fr Kelly
has already seen several of his poems published in anthologies by
Windows Publications.
The poems recited in the CD include one entitled The World of Ether about
his last conversation with his mother before her death in a hospital in
Cavan in 1955 when he was a student at St. Pat's College and had to
cycle in the morning she died.
"It's a description of a young teenager who was unable to cope with
the situation and his mother talking to him and I knew she was dying,"
he explained.
Others describe the kind of lifestyle people had in the 1950s and the
day-to-day work of a priest, including trying to comfort people about
to die.
One, called Long Kesh is about a Mass Fr. Kelly celebrated
for prisoners in the jail on All Saints' Day in 1974.
"They gathered
around for Mass in the open frosty air and I didn’t know if the Mass
meant much to them," he recalled.
Fr. Kelly said he was always interested in poetry but never tried to
write it until he went to work in Portaferry, Co. Down, where he moved
to after 34 years in Belfast.
For the past year, he has been serving as PP priest in Drumbo and Carryduff, Co. Down.
The CD is available from selected outlets including Veritas shops.
He said he finds that people “hear their own story” somewhere in his
CD and he now hopes to have more of his poetry published in book form.
SIC: CIN/IE