![]() ![]() His William Blake walk in London was covered by the BBC’s The Poet of Albion radio broadcast and included among The Great British Walks by the author Nigel Richardson.Īs a poet, he was renowned for the impressive recital of his poems, often accompanied by a bodhran drum or guitar (he could sing any number of Blake’s Songs)ĭuring the Covid lockdown, McDevitt wrote and narrated on films made by the celebrated Dublin film director Sé Merry Doyle. As a self-styled “walking artist”, he organised literary walks on writers such as James Joyce and Yeats, which regularly attracted hundreds of followers. The shamanic poems are the thing itself.”Īrriving in London, McDevitt quickly absorbed himself into the Irish literary scene, becoming poet in residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith (1995-2009), curating many events which brought together the London-Irish community. The poet Jeremy Reed said of McDevitt in b/w that he is a “luminous custodian of the great poetic mysteries. Though suspicious of mainstream coteries (”blimps”, he called them), McDevitt worked with the likes of Yoko Ono and John Peel and was praised by the musician Patti Smith. In his poems, though the city muse was frequently London, he also wrote versions of Sumerian and Babylonian epics and participated in the Babylon Festival in Iraq in 2016. He was able to help save Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s house in Royal College Street, London, as well as protect the land around William Blake’s grave in Bunhill Fields from the threat of redevelopment. ![]() He worked as poetry editor for the International Times, and led on several successful campaigns, helping to release Saw Wai, a jailed Myanmar poet from Insein prison in Yangon. ![]() McDevitt’s activist concerns were also those of an internationalist. He was able to help save Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s house in Royal College Street, London, as well as protect the land around William Blake’s grave His main inspirations were William Blake, WB Yeats, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud. ![]() He was able to connect ancient mythology to the Elizabethans, romanticism to modernism, always through a unique lyric contemporariness. He wrote about London and Ireland, the working class, the underclass, Jerusalem and Palestine, power and corruption. In his work as both poet and essayist, McDevitt consistently fought against injustice and oppression. McDevitt’s poetry collections include b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Porterloo (International Times, 2013) and Firing Slits: A Jerusalem Colportage (2016, New Rivers Press). ![]()
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