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P at Ingoldsby and Tom Mathews are two people int
rinsically woven into the warp and weft of Dublin. Whether known for his much cherished children’s TV presenter antics in the ‘80s through to his decades spent on the streets of the city, as a citizen artist, proudly selling his self-published poetry books, Ingoldsby is a jewel in our crown. Mathews is a cartoonist (and poet also) whose work has graced most Irish publications. He is an ‘institution’ often spotted holding afternoon court in the institution that is Grogan’s. Though he’s mostly a man, modest about his talents, who goes about his business. Pat’s just turned 80 and is the subject of Seamus Murphy’s forthcoming documentary The Peculiar Sensation of Being Pat Ingoldsby as well a new collection of his poetry by the Museum of Literature. Tom is a mere 70 and about to have a career retrospective exhibition in Inis Oírr and publish a new book of poetry. They’ve circled each other over the years but never properly been brought together, until now. What follows is some eavesdropping on the conversation between them when we brought Tom out to chat to Pat at his home in Clontarf. T: “By the way, I brought you a copy of your first book – there you are!” P: “Jaysus, I was married at the time.” T: “That’s right because you mentioned the wife in the introduction and here you are.” Tom hands Pat a copy of his 1977 collection You’ve Just Finished Reading This Title. P: “I wasn’t sufficient for the then wife because of the future I was planning… There was no plan. Two years later, I wasn’t married anymore. At the time, my brotherin-law was a printer so I got a good deal. I sold 4000 copies.” T: “Tell me who did the drawing?” P: “Phil Woods, Phil was creative director in Arks advertising and then Kenny’s and I had just been fucked out of John of God’s for the third time after shock treatment so I didn’t know where I was and Phil brought me in and said to come in and sit at a desk and do whatever I wanted to do… Ah Jaysus Christ! I just had a message from Vivienne who orchestrates the page for me (patingoldsby.org) I haven’t got the internet and there’s a message on it from my exwife. What would she want at this stage?” Pat chuckles. “We didn’t get a divorce at the time, we got a legal separation and then she wanted me to go before a Catholic Church tribunal. This was very emotionally harrowing to prove to them that because of my psychiatric disorder I wasn’t capable of creating a marriage in the first place, so they annulled it. So, in the eyes of the Catholic Church I was never capable of being a married man. Maybe they were right,” he laughs. Tom exchanges his own books of poetry, No Return Game and The Owl and the Pussy Cat (both available at dedaluspress. com) with Pat who asks if he’ll sign them. P: “What mystifies me is why anybody would want to interview an elderly geriatric, incontinent, polio cripple when he’s 80? I don’t get it…Did you ever read Machán Magan’s books?” he asks, pointing to a copy of Thirty-Two Words for Field strewn on the floor, among many other things. “Will you tell him from me he’s nourishing my spirits with his love of Gaeilge.” Shortly after he lands on someone else who is impressing him. P: “Lorcan Finnegan was out here a while ago, a beautiful guy. He came out and showed me his book (Dublin Streets, his recent street photography book) and asked me if I’d write the intro and I just did it straight away. I’m Dublin then, it’s Dublin now. It’s razor-sharp and he worked with Tom Burke (producer of the documentary) on The Liberties film.” As you may have gathered by now, Pat easily switches gear on subject matter, sometimes even mid-stream. Suddenly he’s reminded of a radio guest he heard earlier. P: “What astonishes me is there was a woman, the female equivalent of Leo Enright, on the radio today talking about the largest, heaviest, most powerful space rocket ever being launched – the first of three, this one is not going to land on the moon, the second will have people on it and the third will land on the moon. And she Above: Tom Mathews Opposite: Pat Ingoldsby Both photos: Malcolm McGettigan was talking about establishing a base on the moon. All I was thinking was, it’s a poem I wrote yesterday about why there’s nothing bad about love and still we kill. Homo sapiens are you fucking joking or what? Not content with doing what we’ve done to here, we going to do the same to the moon. Even the cow didn’t land on it, and we’ve already littered the place out there so it’s risky to get a rocket through. We can’t stop Tom!” T: “A long time ago Mr Behan has his song, Don’t muck about with the moon, Mr Khrushchev.” P: “I have a one line poem in one of my books addressed to the sea, Sorry. That’s it.” T: “And rightly so, the last time I saw anything nice about the sea was when I was out on Inis Oírr as an artist-in-residence. I went down to the beach, no pollution, not a sign of a plastic container because it is so far out. I’d forgotten that you could see a beach like that, it was beautiful.” Pat picks up on Tom’s inscription on his poetry book. P: “Is that, ‘Love you, you old wretch’?” cackles Pat. T: “It is.” P: “You got it right.” T: It’s like going back in time there. There is no crime, there’s only 286 people on the island, half of them speaking Irish. P: “Half of them not understanding them,” laughs Pat. T: “Leave the doors open.” 16