Hightown poet 'Going Home to Wyoming'

At the heart of the new book by John Ennis is a poem dedicated to his parents, Lizzie and Jim Ennis. The Hightown poet latest publication, Going Home to Wyoming’ is a collection of works selected from his work between 2000 and 2020, and ‘In Waves Before Them’ is a beautiful tribute to his parents.

The publication is supported by grant aid from the Westmeath County Council Arts Office and it is largely given over to locations, people and personae in his native Westmeath.

In ‘Ériu’, an elderly are couple up at dawn motor over Joe Dolan Bridge on the way to Uisneach to renew their vows, while everywhere there are presences like John Harte on his Fordson Major with Bill Gibney on reaper and binder at the yearly cutting of cornfields.

The poet’s uncles Joe, Dick, Pat and Larry, activists from Hightown in The War of Independence, are remembered in the long poem ‘In the Loft’, the loft where guns were secreted.

‘A Man of Chivalry Returns’ tells of the triumphant return of midland hero Seán McKeon to Mullingar Railway Station to cheering crowds on his way home to Longford, and ‘The Sub Post-Mistress at Ballinalee’ honours the forgotten, nameless heroes and heroines of that war, as she defends her town with McKeon and his men; the only town in the country to successfully repel The Tans with Crown Forces aided by the RIC.

Ennis’s long poem ‘Eilish and Emily Elliot’ (set to music by Enda Seery) tells of the two sisters from Glasson who took part in The Easter Rising of 1916. Fittingly, now, they have a street recently named after them in Athlone.

The cathedral in Mullingar (completed by the Economic War pennies of the poor) features in ‘About the Cathedral’ spoken of as "this one gem in Westmeath", includes Glennon’s famous opening lines of dedication: "Royal Meath was never so royal as she is today for with solemn rite of Holy Church she enthrones in His Basilica, The King of Kings..." stirring rhetoric the poet’s mother mimicked many a time to amuse the family at the dinner table.

Central to the cathedral, with its extraordinary array of marble from around the world, and its museum, are the famous mosaics, including a handsome Patrick often overlooked, those of St Anne and her young daughter Mary, the work of Russian Mosaicist Boris Anrep, who modelled Anne’s face on the face of his lover Anna Akhmatova, the mother of 20th-century Russian poetry.

Mary’s face is that of a scared youngster, surrounded as she is by the priests, the same real teenager who is the subject of Jewish scholar, James D Tabor’s, Mary: "a brave and courageous mother of seven to nine children – most likely ending up a single mother".

John’s book ends with ‘Live Life Magnificently’, a quote from Josephine Hart, who approached her own death from cancer with great courage (the poet shared a St Mary’s seat with her brother Owen, who died in tragic circumstances).

John Ennis is also editor of the recent Green Carnations / Glas na Gile, an Anthology of 25 Young LGBT+ poets writing in the aftermath of the successful 2015 Marriage Referendum.

In these pandemic days of bookshop closures, the two books can be obtained from Book Hub Publishing, Athenry; bookhubpublishing.com.

John Ennis is working on a book of haiku poetry, Trio of Shadows, a threesome he shares with Japanese Haikuists, Maki Starfield and Kika Hotta.