Stray Bullets
Having served over thirty years in the RUC / PSNI I was medically retired with CPTSD. Dissociative Identity Disorder also evolved in me as a residue of CPTSD. I wrote a novel, 'The Bitter End of Dreams', through which I hoped to reflect the experiences of working class folk caught in the grip of a sectarian conflict. I set my story in Belfast, but replaced the Judeo-Christian god with that of Mithras. I also gave Northern Ireland an extra county. Such counterfactual alterations opened up for me the opportunity to place my story deep within the NI Troubles without being shackled to specific timelines, events and real people - thus avoiding the risk of libelling anyone, while being able to write a story, familiar to many, and retaining a sense of place and the tragedy of the Troubles. I'm going to talk openly about elements of policing the Troubles, religion, politics, sectarianism and our toxic ideologies. I've explored these topics in my novel, as well as the placing of actual events and atrocities; albeit heavily disguised or deeply submerged in subtext.To better frame my thoughts I will, firstly, discuss each chapter in sequence before reading that chapter. In this way I should be able to complete a spoken word version of my novel while using the opportunity it provides to elaborate on its creation process in the context of the NI Troubles.Thank you.
Stray Bullets
A Hard and Bitter Circle
In this episode I'll be continuing to look at the aspect of Forgiveness and Recrimination which I began in the episode, 'I Bear No Grudge'. Given the amount of material I've gathered to date, I sense that the topic will continue on for several more episodes.
In this episode I employ two poems by John Hewitt: 'The Iron Circle' and 'The Bloody Brae' in the hope that they may assist in illuminating the complex nature of forgiveness in the context of sectarianism, attendant savagery and subsequent trauma.
Hewitt wrote 'The Bloody Brae' in 1936. It 'lay around until 1953, when [Hewitt] suddenly came on it [...]'.
Both 'The Iron Circle' and 'The Bloody Brae' are taken from:
The Collected Poems of John Hewitt, edited by Frank Ormsby, The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1991.
A partial glossary for The Bloody Brae:
'boording' entering into conversation
'guddling' catching [fish] by hand
'brae' rising ground
'sheugh' ditch
'yowe' ewe
The following link may be of cursory interest:
‘What about Islandmagee?’ Another version of the 1641 rebellion.
https://www.historyireland.com/what-about-islandmagee-another-version-of-the-1641-rebellion/
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