Theo Dorgan: “My Dad buried himself early so that we might live”
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Poet and author Theo Dorgan, welcome. How are you? I'm good, a sunny day like this and we scraped past Waterford yesterday. All right, so all's good in your world. So we asked you to choose five pieces of music that tell us something about your life so far. We normally start at the start. You were the firstborn of 16 children. That's right. 15 of them survived. So was it a big, crazy house you grew up in?
Actually, it was surprisingly well-ordered, only because it had to be. I could put it to you best when I said once, back in the 80s, going through Swansea, pulled by the police at the port and asked them, what was your occupation?
What does Theo Dorgan reveal about growing up as the firstborn of 16 children?
My immediate, spontaneous answer, I surprised myself, was I'm General Secretary to a Soviet of orphans. And it really was one for all and all for one. It had to be. Yeah. And was the host huge? No, not at all. Not at all. Actually, it was a curious house because my father and five of his friends, they built six houses on Redemption Road up near Fern Ferris College. They bought the land and each of them, the six of them worked as labourers on each other's houses. They were all involved in the Peershick. My father was one of the founders of the Peershick. And they brought in a builder and then they did all the labouring, right? And solid cast concrete blocks, they cast them on site. The builder was known, you'd love this, as Corkman, the builder was known as the happy man because he was the most miserable man anybody had ever met.
The happy man.
No, your father wasn't a builder, though.
No, no, my father worked in Dunlops. He worked in Dunlops most of his life. He worked in England during the Second World War in a sugar factory. But he spent his life... That wasn't the time when you went into Dunlops and you got a job in Dunlops or Ford's, you got a mortgage. Because it was a job for life. I still can feel the shock when Ford and Dunlops bailed out of Cork. Yeah, yeah. It tore the heart out of them. I suppose they were what Connolly called the aristocracy of labour. Yeah, yeah. But no, he was, my father was a very modest, quiet man. My mother was gregarious to a fault. She was hilarious. You walk into town, help give her a hand with the shopping on Saturday, a 15 minute walk would take two hours because she knew everybody and they all knew her.
But they were loving people. They were very loving to each other. And their attitude was, it'll get done.
Right, yeah. And I suppose that's... Yeah, because you can imagine how stressed somebody could get in that situation. But they were clearly kind of zen enough about the whole thing, yeah.
Well, I suppose, again, it's no option. But I suppose the one bad effect on me as the eldest and from a very early age, I was Chancellor of the Exchequer. I knew when we had to shift from, say, Maddy Harrington's to, oh God, her name has gone from, you know, to another shop until the book was paid off. And then you switch back again, you know. I knew all of that at probably too early an age, you know.
Your poem, Speaking to My Father, which a lot of people will know, you wrote about your father, that he buried his heart beneath a weight of duty, buried himself early so that we might live. Yeah. What does that mean?
Well, what it means is they were devoted, both of them, to all of their children equally. Perhaps especially, of course, to my brother Pat, who we spoke about before on this program. But they wanted us to have the best education we possibly could. And then the truly heroic thing was then to do what we wanted with it. Like I was a devil. I went and did the doctor's degree in UCC, you know, English and philosophy. I just wanted to be in college and out. And then I went off on the ramble. And at one stage, I was way down in France with some young one. And one of my more sober-minded brothers said, I wish Theo would settle down into a job, you know. Apparently my dad chuckled him. You know, he took him by the collar and said, he's doing what he wants with his life.
That's what I want for all of you.
Fantastic.
Isn't that amazing?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:42
2
What does Theo Dorgan reveal about growing up as the firstborn of 16 children?
0:42–10:35
3
How did Theo Dorgan's father impact his life and poetry?
10:35–11:15
4
What does Theo Dorgan mean by saying his father buried himself early?
11:15–16:42
5
How did music influence Theo Dorgan's upbringing and career?
16:42–29:26
6
What are Theo Dorgan's thoughts on Leonard Cohen's influence?
29:26–34:26