SCHOOL EDITION 29 MAY 2024 - Flipbook - Page 13
OPINION
editor@irishnews.com
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 22 2020
www.irishnews.com
13
ON THIS
DAY
JANUARY 13 1970
Death of Irish
News Editor
INSPIRATION: Post-it notes are one method of trying to remember ideas to write about
How do I think of topics
to write about each week?
With great difficulty
P
EOPLE often ask me how I think of
something different to write every
week. “With difficulty,” is my stock
response. However, the terror of the
empty page is a great galvaniser to creativity
and a deadline is as serious as the prospect
of being hanged in the morning. The thing is,
if I see or do or read something, the thought
occurs, “I could get a piece out of that,”
but if I don’t write it down immediately, it
disappears like snow off a ditch. Rather than
a memory, I have a forgettery. The best ideas
rarely get as far as this page. Cold comfort
is offered by a study carried out by the
University of Tokyo, which explains that our
circadian rhythms which regulate sleep and
awake cycles also affect learning and memory.
They advise, “Forgetful people who struggle
to recall something should wait until later.”
Well, I’m willing to wait, but The Irish News
isn’t.
Oh Dear Reader, if you were only with me
as I wander through the house in a state of
growing agitation and despair and the hands
of the clock travelling at increasing speed.
Worst of all is the idea that promises much,
but won’t go the distance. It’s 72 words short.
“Put in more describing words,” was one less
than helpful suggestion.
Naturally, I keep a notebook by
the bed, reach groggily for it at 3am,
but can’t decipher the writing in the
morning. The late Loving Spouse
bought me a dictaphone, but being a
total technophobe, I’d inadvertently
wipe the tape. Lately, I’ve taken to
sticking fluorescent post-its on the
furniture, scribbled with spontaneous
thoughts and pertinent phrases. I took
one of them to the supermarket last
week under the impression it was my
Anita
ROBINSON
shopping list.
Of course there are tricks of the trade. I’ve
done many creative writing courses facilitated
by ‘real’ writers. “Just be spontaneous”,
advised one. Heads bent obediently to the
task, absolute novices beavering away, pens
flying over paper – and I, biting the end
of my biro, signally failing to ‘spontane’.
Years later, sitting in the writers’ centre at
Annaghmakerrig at the very table, scratched
and ink-stained, where Brian Friel, Seamus
Heaney and a host of other first-rate poets,
playwrights and novelists came to write,
I penned a conversation between the pair
of antique china dogs on either side of the
mantelpiece who must’ve witnessed some
genius over the years.
Oh Dear Reader, if you were
only with me as I wander
through the house in a state of
growing agitation and despair
and the hands of the clock
travelling at increasing speed
To be tutored by professional writers
garlanded with awards and generously willing
to share their ways into creativity is an
opportunity not offered to many. Mind you,
if you’re presented with a sizeable lump of
Donegal granite and asked to write about it,
you have a ‘rock of ages, cleft for me, let me
hide myself in thee’ moment.
They say ‘Those who can – do. Those who
can’t – teach.’ With the nerve of Nelson, I
began tutoring community groups. Writing
for novices is about what you know and feel
and remember – as good a starting point as
any. Nobody’s up for the Booker prize – yet.
I was astonished and moved by the results.
For some it was akin to taking the cork out
of a bottle and finding a voice. And what a
mutually supportive exercise it proved to
be – therapeutic tears and laughter, generous
praise from their peers, pride in their
achievement – with the proviso that what’s
shared in the group, stays in the group. I felt
privileged to help them blossom and have
their trust.
For me, there are rare days when the
writing just flows unstoppably, which is a
mixed blessing since I vastly exceed my word
allowance and have to edit savagely, leaving
the narrative like a badly-cut hedge
and sacrificing phrases I’m particularly
proud of is akin to drowning kittens.
Today is not one of them.
Apropos of nothing, a team of Indian
researchers has discovered that the
pressure of meeting a deadline drives us
to consume calorific junkfood, especially
sweet stuff. To this I can truthfully attest.
Half a packet of chocolate digestives
later, I’ve made it to the end of this
article. And I didn’t even taste them on
the way down.
THE longest-serving editor in the
history of The Irish News, Mr Robert
Kirkwood, died yesterday after a
prolonged illness. He was editor
from 1934 until his retirement four
years ago.
He began his journalist career
on the Clare Champion at Ennis,
moved to the Democrat at
Ballyshannon from which he joined
the Catholic Herald in London. Mr
Kirkwood came to the reporting staff
of the Irish News in 1929 and when
the editorship became vacant four
years later, he was the unanimous
choice of the directors.
He saw the newspaper through
the trials of the Second World
War and even when the Donegall
Street building was rocked by
bombs dropped a short distance
away, the Irish News never
ceased publication. This, he
reputedly boasted, was due to the
cooperation of the Belfast Telegraph
and the late Major Baird who for
six weeks produced the Irish News
on the ‘Telegraph’ machines.
A dedicated newspaperman in the
troubled period of the thirties in
Belfast and during the war years,
he later guided a talented reporting
staff to produce a daily newspaper
noted for its hard factual news
stories and its inspired insight into
events that rocked the country.
He was a close friend of the late
Bishop Daniel Mageean of Down
and Connor who was a frequent
visitor to the Irish News during his
editorship.
As ‘Hiawatha’ he contributed a
regular commentary in the Irish
News on Irish and particularly
Northern Irish affairs in verse and
was the author of a satirical book of
poems, ‘Lays of an Irish Poet’.
By political belief Mr Kirkwood
was a staunch Republican in the
sense that his ideal was a united
thirty two county Irish Republic
but he was a peaceful man who
abhorred violence.
Mr Terence O’Keefe [his
successor as Editor] commented:
Bob Kirkwood came to the Irish
News by way of Irish provincial
newspapers and a spell – like so
many other Irish journalists – on
the Catholic Herald in London. He
took over the editorship of The Irish
News in the early 1930s. These
were critical days for the paper
which alone voiced the minority’s
case for basic rights while Stormont
remained indifferent and there was
talk of a ‘Protestant parliament for a
Protestant people’.
The war years brought many
problems for newspapers,
especially the severe rationing of
newsprint so that The Irish News
shrank in size. But his sturdy
independence of approach to the
problems of Northern involvement
in the war, one the one side, and
the neutrality of the greater part
of Ireland on the other, compelled
admiration.
EDITED BY ÉAMON PHOENIX
e.phoenix@irishnews.com