The biography of acclaimed Co Tyrone poet John Montague is set to be released in December. Written by Missouri-born author and professor, Adrian Frazier, A Poet’s Life chronicles Montague’s life and work as one of Ireland’s best known contemporary poets.
“I met John a long time ago when I was studying a postgraduate degree at Trinity College,” recalls Frazier who was a close acquaintance of Montague for more than 40 years.
“I ran into him and I happened to have with me a copy of his poetry book Tides and he noticed it and we started chatting and after that I had a continuous friendship with him.”
Read more: Tributes paid to Co Tyrone poet John Montague (87) after he dies in France
Prior to Montague’s death in 2016 he made an arrangement with Frazier that he would write his biography.
“I was reading through a diary a friend of John’s sent me whilst I was researching. She had recorded this conversation they had in the 1980s where she’d asked him, ‘Who do you think is going to write your biography?’ and he said, ‘I think it might be Adrian Frazier’.
“So, he seemed to have planned for quite a long time,” he laughs.
Although Frazier has written several other biographies and monographs, he admits that his bond with Montague made the writing process unique.
“It was strange because usually if you’re writing a biography, you’re not in it – you’re like the cameraman, you’re not in the picture,” he says.
“But in this case because most of what I knew about John’s life I knew because he told me or because I was there. I had to find a way of writing the book so that wouldn’t look strange when I appear in it.
“But I’m not present very much,” he assures.
Montague was born into an Irish immigrant family in Brooklyn in 1929. However, due to the impact of the Great Depression he was sent to live with his aunts in Garvaghey in Co Tyrone in 1933.
It was necessary for him as a writer to acknowledge pain because in doing so it could be helpful to other people who may have had similar experiences. His lifelong commitment to that vision makes him a fairly unique writer in Ireland – he was completely in favour of the light shining on things
— Adrian Frazier
“His life was a mystery to him in a lot of ways,” Frazier explains.
“There’s a sense of the orphan about him - he grew up without a mother and father and he had to find those nurturing characters in the community around Garvaghey which he did.
“It’s clear he got an awful lot out of the years he spent there – they completely formed his imagination because he kept going back to it over and over again in his work.”
In 1972 Montague published his acclaimed collection The Rough Field, the title of which was inspired by his time in Garvaghey. The work saw him compared to literary legends such as Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley.
“He had a basic belief that it was from the broken places in a person that great art would come.”
Read more: Michael Longley at 85: ‘I’ve just bought the new Sally Rooney. She’s very good on sex’
Montague’s poetry also explored difficult topics including abortion, alcoholism, domestic violence and clerical abuse - well ahead of public discourse, offering release from personal and collective pain.
“It was necessary for him as a writer to acknowledge pain because in doing so it could be helpful to other people who may have had similar experiences.
“His lifelong commitment to that vision makes him a fairly unique writer in Ireland – he was completely in favour of the light shining on things.”
This spirit continues through Frazier’s vivid, honest narrative as he captures Montague’s creative evolution and legacy.
“Some people have said that if John and I were friends then wouldn’t I want to protect him from some of the things that he did in his life that he wished he hadn’t,” he says.
“But there’s mistakes and foolishness in everybody’s life and he always wrote about the trouble in his own and I know, from him directly, that he just wanted me to tell the truth.
“He didn’t want to be spared; he wanted it to be a very candid book. I liked John and I want to do right by him but at the same time I know he wouldn’t want me to hide anything.”
A Poet’s Life will be launched in Dublin on December 4 and in the Tyrone GAA Centre at Garvaghey on December 5 at 7pm, lilliputpress.ie
