UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 7 September 2017 at 5.30 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR MARGARET KELLEHER, School of English, Drama and Film on 7 September 2017, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on NIALL MacMONAGLE.
A Uachtarán, a mhuintir na hOllscoile agus a dhaoine uaisle (President, members of the University and Distinguished guests), University College Dublin is proud to honour the distinguished career of Niall MacMonagle in recognition of his outstanding work as educator, anthologist, broadcaster and cultural commentator, who has played a key role in fostering influential public initiatives relating to culture, literature and most especially poetry.
Niall was born in Killarney, son of Lil Cremin of Knocknagree and Sean MacMonagle, who with his brother ran Killarney print works; he is the sibling of Philip, John, Riona and David. We welcome here today his brothers John and David, Mary Clayton (Niall’s wife) and their daughter Catherine. Niall was educated at Pallaskenry and received his BA and MA from UCC, where his masters thesis was on the work of Virginia Woolf; he tutored in English at UCC for a number of years and also taught in Bandon, Co. Cork.
In the early 1980s he began his teaching career at Wesley College, Dublin, where he taught English for over thirty years. Adjectives eagerly provided by his former students testify to his passion, dedication, compassion and generosity; his infectious enthusiasm for the Arts, his creative and inspiring role as educator; to quote one student, ‘simply beloved’.
The impact of such qualities moved quickly beyond these classrooms to the national and international arena with his development in the mid 1980s of the Lifelines Project: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poem. This project which, as MacMonagle recalls, ‘first saw the light of day as a little Gestetnered, stapled booklet” now spans four volumes; the New and Collected Lifelines was published in 2010 to coincide with a wonderful exhibition of the original letters in the National Library of Ireland. This anthology includes over 340 letters and poems, beginning with Graham Norton and his choice of Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘Epic’ (no doubt influenced by his Bandon secondary school teacher, one Niall MacMonagle) and ending with Eavan Boland and her choice of the seventeenth-century poem ‘Julia’s Clothes’ by Robert Herrick. The project has raised significant funds for developing world charities.
In 1993 also at Wellesley he founded the poetry-speaking initiative Poetry Aloud; this is now a nation wide competition, organized by the National Library and Poetry Ireland, and with which Niall continues to have a central involvement. Poetry Aloud celebrates its 10th national anniversary this September; in the last year alone, some 1600 students entered the competition. His anthologies of poetry have influenced generations of Irish second-level students of literature (through textbooks such as Poetry Now which he has edited annually since 2002 and the transition year reader Text) and he has gained an immense public readership through collections such as Real Cool: Poems to grow up with, Outside In: Stories to grow up with, The Open Door Book Of Poetry, and Slow Time: 100 poems to take you there.
Commenting on the key role of the intellectual in modern public life, the late Edward Said observed: ‘It is the intellectual as a representative figure that matters… intellectuals are individuals with a vocation for the art of representing, whether that is talking, writing, teaching, appearing on television…’ These are lines that seem written for Niall MacMonagle, given the significance of his writing life and of his broadcasting work, delivered in mellifluous Kerry tones enjoyed by the nation! The many examples include his memorable contributions to RTE’s Sean O’Rourke programme to mark the year of Dickens, the year of Shakespeare and now the year of Austen; his work as consultant to RTE radio one’s Poetry Show; or his weekly column on visual art ‘What Lies Beneath’ for the Sunday Independent in which he has championed the work of many young and emerging Irish artists. He is a regular and most generous contributor to national cultural festivals including the Listowel Writers’ Week, the Limerick Literary Festival, the Ennis Book Festival and the Dun Laoghaire Mountains to Sea Book Festival, and his arts interviews (whose subjects range from writer Margaret Drabble to artists Barrie Cooke and Camille Souter) are deeply illuminating. And in work less visible to the public eye, he has been a tireless supporter of Irish culture as past member of the board of the NLI for 5 years, member of the Member of Rooney Prize Committee for 9 years, through his current work as member of the board of directors of SH estate, as judge of the UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award, and his central involvement in the TS Eliot Foundation Abbey Annual Lecture.
His most recent collection, the acclaimed anthology Windharp, which provides poems for each year of the century 1916 to 2015, could only have been compiled by Niall MacMonagle and it is movingly dedicated ‘in memory of Seamus Heaney’ (we are honoured that Marie Heaney is with us today). The closing lines of Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize Lecture resonate throughout today’s occasion: here he speaks of ‘poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit’: in Heaney’s compelling words, “the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values.”
It is especially fitting that we honour the work of Niall MacMonagle today, at a conferring ceremony in which we celebrate the power and value of education, when we reflect on the influence of our own teachers, mentors and educators, and when we look to the future that you, the graduating class of 2017, will shape and form, carrying with you – we hope – at least one of Niall’s anthologies! In conferring on him this honorary doctorate, we salute, in esteem and with gratitude, the work of Niall MacMonagle as advocate for the arts and champion for poetry, his exemplary teaching legacy, and his continuing work as educator and inspirer of legions of readers.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.