A BLUE plaque has been unveiled on the Falsl Library to honour Belfast's 'Troubles' bard Padraic Fiacc.
Born Patrick Joseph O’Connor in 1925, Fiacc hailed from Elizabeth Street in the Falls and is remembered for his ten books of poetry (under his pen name Padraic Fiacc) which included numerous poems protesting state repression and violence.
Joe was brought up by his grandparents in the Market area after his father emigrated to America.
In 1929 the family emigrated to join Joe’s father in New York where he owned two grocery stores in Manhattan — which went under in the Wall Street Crash. That forced a move to the desolate Hell’s Kitchen quarter. The harsh realities of this new life left their mark on the immigrant Irish boy.
After school, Joe had attended a seminary but abandoned training for the priesthood and in the next decade divided his time between New York and Belfast.
He eventually settled in Glengormley, with his wife Nancy, having had work published in New York in the 1948 volume New Irish Poets. Publication of his collection Odour of Blood in 1973 followed the breakdown of his marriage and coincided with the return of the sectarian violence he’d known as a boy.
There were more volumes of poetry in the 70s and 80s — Nights in the Bad Place (1977) and Missa Terriblis (1986), as well as a Selected Padraic Fiacc from Blackstaff Press.
Fiacc’s poetry subjects range from his boyhood as an exile in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to the bloody mayhem that erupted on the streets of his native city in the years after his return.
His unsparing poetry about the violence here was written with pity and sorrow as well as anger.
President Michael D Higgins is an admirer of Faicc’s work and, he visited the poet in the care facility where he was being looked after, shortly before his death in January 2019.
Chris Spurr, chairman of the Ulster History Circle, said: “Padraic Fiacc, born in the Falls Road area of Belfast, began his poetical journey in the melting pot of New York, then returning to his home city, he engaged robustly in verse with the tumult he found there.
“The Ulster History Circle is delighted to commemorate this acclaimed poet with a blue plaque close to his birthplace. The Circle is grateful to Multimedia Heritage for their financial support towards the plaque and to Libraries NI for their kind assistance.’
Dr Jim O’Hagan, Libraries NI Chief Executive added: “Libraries NI is pleased to support the Ulster History Circle in commemorating Padraic Fiacc with a blue plaque at Falls Road Library.
“His work captured the reality of life in Belfast during some of its most difficult times and it’s fitting that his contribution is recognised on a building that continues to serve the local community in the area where he was born.”
