Thomas Carnduff

Life
1886-1956 [Tom Carnduff; sometimes ‘The Island Poet’; viz., Queen’s Island]; Presbyterian, socialist, Belfastman; son of Army corporal from Drumbow who was invalided, and Jane Bollard; shipyard worker, employed by Workman and Clark, north side of Lagan; printer during adolescence; saw service in WWI; returned to shipyards, and later worked as binman, Civil Defence worker (WWII), and finally as caretaker at Linen Hall Library; twice married; four sons by first wife (d.1939; remarried 1940); lived latterly on Hanover St.; member of Independent Orange Order, and Master of an Independent Lodge in the 1920s and 30s; fnd. Belfast Poetry Circle, 1926; writes to Belfast Telegraph lamening absence of first-class local literary man to assist our poetry circle, and is answered caustically by John Hewitt (30 July 1926); fnd. Ulster Society, 1936; Poverty Street (1921); Songs from the Shipyards, poems (1924); Workers, a major play premiered at the Abbey, 1932, and now extant in incomplete copy only; Songs of an Out of Work (1932), written when himself unemployed; Machinery (1933); Traitors (1934); Castlereagh (1934), historical drama, combining themes of Empire and ’98 Republicanism (the sole complete typescript); The Stars Foretell (1938), all played in Belfast and Abbey; collaborated with Denis Johnston on radio documentary, ‘Birth of a Giant (1937), on shipbuilding; contrib. to The Bell first Ulster issue on ‘Belfast’ (1942); to The Bell under ed. of his friend Peadar O’Donnell, ‘The Orange Society’ (July 1951); also ‘Belfast as an Irish City’ (Apr. 1952); an autobiography written for Richard Rowley’s Mourne Press. also incomplete, published in Life and Writings, ed. John Gray (1994), which also contains pieces of his journalism; Carnduff’s Songs from the Shipyards and Other Poems was the first book of poetry purchased by John Hewitt, in 1924. DUB

[ top ]

References
1995, Thomas Carnduff, Life and Writings (Lagan Press 1994), 191pp.

Belfast Public Library holds Castlereagh, a play of 1798 [typescript]; Poverty Street and Other Poems (Belfast: Lapwing 1993), 75pp.; Songs of an Out-of-Work (Belfast: Quota 1932), 55pp.; Songs from the Shipyard & Other Poems (Belfast: EH Thorton [n.d.]

[ top ]

Notes
Brendan Hamill reviews Gray, ed., Life and Works of Thomas Carnduff (1994 Lagan Press), in Fortnight Review (April 1995), paradoxical affection for empire and 1798; incl. fine 3,000 word history and introduction, with virtual exposition of Belfast labour history 1930-91; refs. incl. Richard Rowley, Ruddick Miller, Peadar O’Donnell, Patrick MacGill, et al., up to John Hewitt.

Poverty St. [1921], includes ‘Ballad of the Hammer’; Cave Hill – Mac Art’s Fort’; ‘Poverty’ ‘Riots, 1921’; ‘Ships’; but also ‘Dear Little Shamrock’ [‘God bless our native land’, 24]; ‘Ypres’ [Tis sunset and the crimson glow/Spreads like a flaming fan/Across the sky, white clouds flow/Transparent in its span//Light breezes, scented with North Sea spray/Breathe murmurs of remorse/And leafless shell-scarred branches sway/Above each mangled corpose//The ancient towers of Ypres loom grim/Athwart the crimson sky//They silhouette their gaunt dark ruin/As if in mute reply//below the ramparts lies the plain/As far as eye can see/its beauty scarred with gory stain/Of Man’s artillery/’Neath Zillebeke’s green fossilled lake/pale ghostly faces gleam/And round its slimy bottom rake/The embers of their dream’ (p.70)].

Carnduff celebrated Thomas Andrews, the architect of the Titanic (as did Shan Bullock in a novel): ‘’A Queen’s Island Trojan he worked to the last;/Very proud we all feel of him here in Belfast’/Our working-men knew him as one of the best -/He stuck to his duty, and God gave the rest.’ (Cited in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland, 1994, p.18.)

[ top ]