James Simmons (poet) - Career

Career

When Simmons returned to Northern Ireland he took part in The Belfast Group, together with such notables as Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. In 1968, with his nephew Michael Stephens, Simmons went on a tour of universities in England. When he returned to Ireland, he established The Honest Ulsterman, the most important Irish literary journal of the next 35 years. Simmons served as the editor for 17 of the first 19 issues; he then passed control of the magazine onto a series of younger editors. The Honest Ulsterman published a series of more than 30 poetry chapbooks, including the first collections of work by Paul Muldoon ("Knowing My Place"), Michael Foley ("The Acne and the Ecstasy"), and Michael Stephens ("Blues for Chocolate Doherty"). Members of the Belfast Group frequently published in The Honest Ulsterman.

Whereas John Hewitt, the Ulster poet whom Simmons called 'the grandaddy of us all', ground out his truth by placing himself in the mortar and pestle of nature, Simmons ground his out by placing himself under a self-imposed public scrutiny. Using his own life for material, he explored his frailties in his poetry with the clinical detachment of a laboratory technician, the humour of a big soul, and the vulnerability of a lover. Perhaps his best epitaph is his own:

"Hiding in humility, In irony, and wit, It would be very hard to prove That Simmons is a shit"

He won several prizes for his poetry including the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards.

He also wrote a critical biography of Sean O'Casey (London: Macmillan).

Throughout his career Simmons wrote and performed exquisitely provocative, yet hilarious and humane, songs about every aspect of contemporary life. In 1970 he founded a new platform for bringing these to a wider audience, the satirical revue - The Resistance Cabaret - with Garvin Crawford, Victor Thompson, David Templeton, Eithne Murphy, Jim Brown, Mike Graves, Jon Marshall and Heather Hutchinson. In varying line-ups, they performed their unique repertoire regularly at venues throughout Northern Ireland until 1976. His poetry collection, West Strand Visions, contains some of the repertoire. He recorded three collections of his own songs - City & Eastern, Love In The Post, The Rostrevor Sessions - and produced a Resistance Cabaret album with the other members. He also set a number of Yeats' poems to music which he released on a tape cassette. The album was called Women's Company and included original songs and a selection of jazz standards.

Since his death Simmons' work has been increasingly marginalised - few anthologies include him - and a 'Collected Poems' is yet to appear. His songs, however, continue to challenge and delight appreciative audiences of The Resistance Cabaret.

• Ballad of a Marriage (1966)
• Late but in Earnest (London: Bodley Head; 1967)
• Ten Poems (1969)
• In the Wilderness (London: Bodley Head; 1969)
• No Ties (1970)
• Energy to Burn (London: Bodley Head; 1971)
• The Long Summer Still to Come (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1973)
• West Strand Visions (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1974)
• Judy Garland and the Cold War (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1976)
• The Selected James Simmons (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1978)
• Constantly Singing (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1980)
• From the Irish (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1985)
• Poems, 1956-1986 ( Dublin, The Gallery/UK, Bloodaxe 1986)
• At Six O'Clock In The Silence Of Things (Belfast: Lapwing Publications; 1993)
• Sex, Rectitude and Loneliness (Belfast: Lapwing Publications; 1993)
• Mainstream (Galway: Salmon Poetry; 1995);
• The Company of Children (Galway: Salmon Poetry; 1999)