By Niall Gartland

“This collection reminds us that the game, in all its forms, isn’t just about sport. It’s about identity, belonging and community. It’s about how a game can hold a community together, and how that community, in turn, gives the game its life. That’s not an easy thing to capture. In these poems, Dermot does that brilliantly.”

Those are the concluding lines from Off The Ball’s GAA correspondent Tommy Rooney in the foreword to a newly published anthology entitled The Language of Place – Poems of Gaelic Sport.

The latest collection by Manchester-based Irish poet Dermot Murphy charts a lyrical journey through Ireland’s counties, where Gaelic games become a means of exploring memory, identity, loss, joy and belonging. The old adage that it is “more than a game” is perfectly applicable to a work that celebrates the enduring connections fostered by the GAA and its wider cultural impact.

In that respect, it shares a common identity with Murphy’s previous collections, including Not Yet Ash, which conveys the private aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising through the voices of those left behind – the wives, mothers, sisters and sons of the executed leaders.

Murphy said: “What I do try to find is the less obvious, the bits that are underacknowledged. Whether it’s the collection about 1916 – thinking about what life might have been like for those people and what their feelings might have been – or the other collections I’ve done, I’m always looking at issues of belonging.

“It’s a big question for a lot of people who consider themselves Irish – people with Irish backgrounds, people born in Ireland, or people about to move there. It’s about belonging and what it means, what family means, and what all of that represents.

“The GAA typifies that. We’ve all got a favourite era and we can all connect to the sports. I suppose it’s about trying to understand what belonging and community really mean. For Irish people, it’s not about where you are; it’s about a shared history, a shared understanding, and a way of seeing the world.”

Murphy’s experience of working in a hospice setting prompted his first work, In the Quiet Light, which invites readers to understand life through the eyes of young people with life-limiting conditions.

“I’ve always read a lot, and part of that is reading poetry. It’s something I’ve always done. The reason it became more public was that, initially, it was just to raise money for the hospice. In The Quiet Light was about the perspective of some of the young people with life-limiting conditions – how they might experience life, trying to understand that a little better while also raising money for the hospice.

“Then it was a case of, ‘You’ve got to write another one.’ The advice to writers is to write about what you know. I know about my family, about Ireland, about 1916, so I’ve gone back to those things. They all have a shared meaning for me. Although, on the face of it, you could say they’re all very different, for me they’re not. There are common themes that keep arising: identity, loss, and all those kinds of things.”

His latest collection will naturally appeal to GAA supporters across Ireland and beyond, but Murphy emphasises that it is intended for all audiences. That is reflected in the impressionistic artwork of Croke Park on the front cover, with its subdued palette creating a nostalgic atmosphere.

“That was really the publisher’s idea. Although it’s about sport, we tried to avoid it looking like a traditional sports book cover. We wanted it to have some connection to sport without simply using a straightforward picture of Croke Park.

“We wanted to recognise that the book is about something more than just sport – that there’s another aspect to it. Even if you have very little or no connection to Gaelic sport, you can still understand some of what is being expressed in these poems.”