From Donegal and Clare, and Connaught and the Munster hills...... Your plea is remembered and we battle on, energised by your passion
Brian Anson - Architect, Story Teller, Poet, Revolutionary
Inspiration (1934-2009)
Brian Anson passed away over the weekend after being inflicted with a sudden illness.
Audio documentary; Stories of architecture and social struggle with Brian Anson
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/37463
Im sure people up on Belfast`s Divis street and amongst the quiet green Donegal fields of Gaoth Dobhair will be thinking about a strange English man who came to their respective communities during times of war, listened to their stories and did his damdest to assist them in their fight for the kind of world they wanted.
Brian Anson was a very special person, his life was filled with struggle, wins and losses. I had the pleasure to meet him in Letterfrack at a European architectural summer school in 2008, we shared stories and dreams, we talked about hope and love and loss and life, we talked about what a fair world would look like and what kind of journey has to be taken to get there. We laughed, drank the odd pint of stout together and became friends, since then we kept in contact via email and phone, he passed on much of his poetry, and I came to know this man better and know of the love he had for Ireland, her sad strange story and her people.
I received the sad news of Brians passing from one of his friends in Divis Street campaign in Belfast. How strange the news came, as I was only listening to Brian during the last few days communicate his dreams, stories and pains in the interview we did with him in Letterfrack.
Full articles about his life and work can be found at
Brian Anson - Activist/Architect/Artist
http://easa.antville.org/stories/1809967/
Brian Anson - news of his death
http://easa.antville.org/stories/1949690/
You can listen to the 2 radio recordings we did with him in Letterfrack at:
Stories of architecture and social struggle with Brian Anson
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/37463
British soldier report about Divis St flats
http://www.forums.theraa.co.uk/index.php?name=Forums&fi...=1261
Over the course of a 15 year period, beginning in February, 1972 and March, 1987, seven soldiers lost their lives in or around the Divis Street flats.
Some of his poetry can be found at
Response to the "Coming out as an artist" blog - from visionary yet definitely not hooked up Architect Brian Anson
http://www.fadooda.com/index.php?itemid=71
I leave you with his poem and earlier bio.
Sleep well Brian my friend, thank you for sharing your passion.
From Donegal and Clare, and Connaught and the Munster hills...... Your plea is remembered and we battle on, energised by your passion
Dunk
HOMAGE TO MARTHA
(Written in dedication to the book of poetry and prose - PASS THE VALIUM MARTHA - the voice of the Bootle working-class published by the Liverpool Writers Workshop in 1982.)
Glory be to you oh Martha, you threw the bottle in the bin and
stamped your swollen foot upon the pills that they.
who brutalise and blind, and slave and kill your kind,
create to cure your ills.
We must resist; we can insist that, deep within our people
is the culture that they took to store within their banks,
without a word of thanks, and surely
that is why you wrote the book.
But Martha love the road is long - we tread our separate paths
to find ourselves, and who we were –
and for my part, I chose the gaels,
and rediscovered Bootle in the Irish air.
To move from concrete Bootle, and its jobless hordes who pace the
unemployment boards, have I digressed to find the truth
I seek amongst the rocks and empty cabins
of the windswept Irish west?
Well hear my plea, and see my broken heart: and let us start with
Donegal and Clare, and Connaught and the Munster hills......
within them, and the turmoil of the poet bards (your ancestors oh Martha sweet)
we find the very source of Bootle’s ills.
To tell the tales of common folk
they had no need for fancy words,
or to embroider it; like Common Joe (in your own words)
they didn’t” peddle shit”
They spoke of landlords, gombeen men, the bailiffs and their ilk who,
while they robbed the people of their voice,
bought finery and silk and lived in stately homes and
passed their laws in parliaments obscene while,
in the mist, the common voice lived on though - pity dear oh Martha love -
the common mouth turned green from eating grass to keep themselves alive -
not only for their body and their soul -
but also that their poetry survive to tell the tale of what was done by conquerors
to keep the people down and here’s the rub (oh Martha sweet)
those lace-clad villains were the same who,
through their lust for power,
ravaged through the streets of Bootle town.
The mildewed thatch and earth-clod walls of cabins battered by the gales,
with hungry children and the unemployed, are but the parents of
the concrete bunker cells where sorrow, misery and debt exist
within the high-rise gaols.
But Gaelic poets did not die: through centuries of pain
they wandered through their ravaged glens,
and used their songs and used their pens,
to give the peoples’ word again.
And so, in Bootle, do the same (your enemies were theirs)
they’ll rape your streets and steal your land, and crucify your soul:
they’ll mutilate your children and put you on the dole:
but your voices they can never kill - the poet always cares.
So darling, dearest, Martha, this is the way I took
to try to understand the pain within my childhood land,
and why I sigh - to reason why -
you had to write your book.
So dearest love I honour you for doing what you did:
for bringing forth the common word,
that it be heard, and be a sword, to point out Bootle’s ills so
do not Pass the Valium.......just throw away those pills.
Brian Anson
London 1982
Divis Street flats - scene of one of Brian Anson`s architectural battles
From Donegal and Clare, and Connaught and the Munster hills...... Your plea is remembered and we battle on, energised by your passion
Brian Anson tells the next generation the story of the battle of Divis Street
Sláinte agus go mbeirfidhmuid beo ar an ám seo arís agus go bhfeidhmuid bás le siocháin
http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/download/37463/42702/59461/?url=http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/brian_anson_-_divis_st_flats.mp3
Brian Anson talking about the architectural battle to have the Divis street Flats knocked during times of war
http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/download/37463/42702/59462/?url=http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/Brian_Anson_interview_at_EASA_letterfrack.mp3
BOLD interview Brian Anson regarding architecture, education, ecology and social change.