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April 2005

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Heimbold chair of Irish Studies unearths American roots of family history
By Megan Armstrong '06

   Michael Coady, Ireland-born writer, musician and the English department’s Heimbold chair of Irish Studies for the spring semester, has been in the country since Jan. 1, but the story of the Coady family in America traces him much earlier in national history.

   “That story began as the story of an abandoned child in Ireland, and it ended as the story of an abandoned father in Philadelphia. I came along and tried to bridge the two. Usually people are traveling from America to Ireland in search of family roots, family connections. I was doing the opposite, really. I was coming to America, from the future, discovering the past in America – an amazing experience which I didn’t foresee at all. It was just as though there were ghosts at my elbow,” said Coady.

   Coady’s great-grandfather, James Coady, left his first wife, who was pregnant with Coady’s grandfather at the time, in Ireland to come to America. Coady was compelled to write this story in a poem called “The Letter,” originally printed in his book “Oven Lane” and later reprinted in “All Souls,” which recounts the arrival of a letter from Coady’s great-grandfather to his son, Coady’s grandfather. The poem, which Coady developed into a prose memoir titled “The Use of Memory,” recounts how the letter, a plea for forgiveness from James Coady in Philadelphia, was torn up and thrown into the fire.

   All these facts were not available to Coady at the time he composed the poem, however.  “I wrote the poem not knowing at all what had happened in America, except that this letter had come, and it may have come from Philadelphia, and the poem was published. The poem is an exploration of all that happened in Ireland and what might have happened in America. So it was as though I was trying to answer this letter three generations on,” he said.

  With the help of a genealogist from Maryland specializing in Irish-American lineage, Coady filled in the gaps of his family history. He even found his great-grandfather’s grave, put a stone on it, and read “The Letter” in the church where James Coady remarried in Philadelphia, the Church of St. Malechy. Coady also befriended the pastor of he parish, John Macknamee, who also turned out to be a poet.

   “We’ve become friends and I’ve gotten to know people in that community of St. Malechy and restored something. I visited the locations where my great-grandfather lived – some of them are still there. So I know more that my father did, or my grandfather did. And here I am, back here at Villanova, which is practically in Philadelphia,” he said.

   Coady’s family history has come full circle, beginning with a few trips to the United States earlier in his life, and culminating with his appointment to Heimbold chair this semester.

   “The way that things happen to happen fascinates me, the chance things that decide our lives, the choices and the chances. And it’s hard to know sometimes where choice begins and where chance enters in,” he said. 

   Like the cyclic journey of uncovering his family history, Coady’s work as a writer demonstrates a similar fluidity. Coady has broken new ground in literature by integrating poetry, prose and his own photographs into his publications. In addition to these creative interests, Coady also incorporates his musical talents into the writing process.

   “Often, when I’m writing poetry, I sometimes take a poem, when I’ve written it, and write it down in musical notation to see the rhythms. Otherwise, I follow my instinct about sound. I think sound and poetry have always gone together in the tradition of poetry, and I come from a country in which folk song is important, and we have a long poetry tradition as well.”

   “I like the idea of multi-genre; I don’t see why prose and poetry shouldn’t be side by side, and I don’t see why photographs shouldn’t be with these as well, provided you can find some thematic overall structure that gives some sense to putting them together. I don’t like the idea of corralling poetry in one book, short stories in another. I like to think that a book will find its form,” Coady said.

   Coady’s books include Two for a Woman, Three for a Man (1980), Oven Lane (1987/1992/2001), All Souls (1997/2001), One Another (2003) and Full Tide (1999). Coady’s writing is primarily concerned with time and mutability, also exploring individual destiny, community, mortality and memory within the concept of place.

   Coady hopes to offer his insight into the creative process to his students this semester. He is currently teaching two classes: Dancing with Words, essentially a creative writing course, and Visions and Voices from Ireland, an Irish literature course.

   “In the case of literature, what I want to try and do is explore the Irish voice and the Irish experience and how it connects with Americans, which is a very important part of my own work,” he said.

   When asked about the advantages of studying Irish literature, Coady suggested the strong ties that link Irish and American cultures. “I think you have to acknowledge the fact that there are unique links between the two countries. Now there is something like 40 million people in this country who have Irish links of one kind or another. That is an enormous part of your national story, and that alone, I think, should make people curious about the culture. I think at the same time that young people now have an interest in the Irish constituent of their cultural background, they want to enter it in a deeper way; they want to get beyond the superficial,” he said.

   Before being appointed Heimbold professor, to help support his family when he was younger, Coady took a position as a primary school teacher in his hometown of Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland, where he still lives today.

   “I found that people here in America are astonished when I tell them that by the time I leave [Villanova] with my family at the end of May, I will have been longer out of my hometown continuously than I’ve ever been in my life,” Coady said.

   Coady recently celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in the United States, but very differently than he is accustomed to celebrating in Ireland. Coady and friends visited the Plow in the Stars, an Irish pub in Philadelphia, and then toured the city.

   “I was asked to sing [at the pub]. I did a traditional song in the Irish language. And we went down into the Irish memorial at Penn’s Landing. It was very moving to be there, because I was right on the ground where my great-grandfather had bent his back three, four generations ago,” he added.

   Next year, Coady will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with family and friends in Ireland where, appropriately, his life once again will have come full circle.