Steve Earle: Galway Girl
On 27th November 2018 I reach the grand old age of 70. I know, I know “How can that be true, Jeff?” I hear you all cry but it is and it has taken a lot to get my head around it as well.
Rather than shrink away and gather dust in a corner, I thought I would do something different to celebrate the inevitable. My plan is to publish over the next 70 weeks, 70 poems. These poem will take as their inspiration 70 songs by 70 different artists or groups.
I listen to and read a lot of poetry but I also love to listen to music and over the decades that music has been a back drop to my life and many of the lyrics and sounds have inspired me as much as poetry and literature. The blog is a celebration of those songs and artists.
My method of writing these poems is very simple, I take the track that I want to be the inspiration for the poem and I listen to it, taking notes all the time and then from those notes I write the poem.
The first poem of this series was inspired by Galway Girl by Steve Earle. I love Steve’s
songs and they also remind me of a good friend, Howard Richardson who passed away a few years ago. Howard was a great guitarist and singer and Steve Earle’s songs were a big part of his repertoire. There is more about Steve at steveearle.com
I was brought up a Catholic spending my Sunday Mornings at St Robert’s and Wednesday evenings at the Youth Club. The Catholic population of the West End of Newcastle was mainly of Irish extraction, as was my Grandmother, as a youth I yearned after the girls with their dark hair, ivory skin and blue eyes, an image that became imprinted on my young mind.
The Unnoticed Shadow
“I ain’t seen nothin’ like a Galway Girl” Steve Earle
Sunday morning St Robert’s Catholic Church 1960
She is thirteen and I am twelve and I am in love
Complete, undiscovered and unrequited love
Her crown of twisted black curls, her steel blue eyes
Have seduced me, stolen my heart and taken the strength from my bones
A glimpse of her knee socks makes my knees knock
The click of her heels is symphony on the stone slabs
The choir’s hymn a hallelujah to her beauty
She is an Angel
She is my salvation
She is out of my league
I am invisible as dust
I ask you friends what’s a fellow to do
because her hair was black and her eyes were blue
Sunday Morning O’Connell Street 2000
The airport coach drops me off by the Old Post Office
I blink in the sullen sunlight of a Irish morning
There she is, waiting for me on a Dublin Street
She’s sitting on a bench on St Stephen’s Green
She’s serving my pint of Guinness in Slatery’s Bar
Her skin still pale as paper
Her dark blue eyes still drown me
I am seduced again, tumbling through time
The heady smell of incense mixed with her perfume
Light dancing through the stained glass windows
Fifty years ago I lost my heart to a Galway Girl
She is still out of my league
I am still an unnoticed shadow
I ask you friends what is a fellow to do
because her hair was black and her eyes were blue
Jeff Price
Hi jeff here is poem inspired by your above tales ! Called Altar Boys
God , how we fancied them , the altar boys. They had strange outfits and power and answered
Only to the priest. Except , the little tubby one , Barry
Used to carry my books home , him I could not bear.
When people offer themselves like that it’s so degrading. What you are
Offered freely , you despise.
But tall Stephen, with the sister at the posh school,
Who ignores you , and wears snazzy shirts and Cuban heels ..you desire.
For him you curl your hair on saint’s days and learn the names of the
Stations off the cross. For him you wear
Blue eyeshadow and scarlet o her a lipstick. You see him on Saturday in town
You follow him and loiter over a coffee
You jostle him in Woolworths and finally he looks at you, through you
And into the face of Nigel the other altar boy. They link arms
And you realise you may not be Stephens first choice , not even on Saturday
Which everybody knows is the fuck the world i want to get off day.
This is God’s idea of a joke you realise.
And thirty years later ..i still ain’t laughing.
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