I’m a bit ignorant of Irish poets, so Cathal O’Searcaigh has flown under my radar until the recent controversy on the documentary “Fairytale of Kathmandu”. I haven’t seen the documentary, but essentially it involved a film crew going to Kathmandu with this Irish poet and filming his charity work. The wrinkle is that while there, the crew observed his sexual relationships with multiple boys, all of whom were over the age of consent in Nepal, but nonetheless it seemed somewhat unusual.

The bloggosphere is alive with this story and these are my thoughts on it.

First of all, it is not a healthy thing to have a monied westerner dispensing largesse in an ad hoc manner to young impressionable boys that he later has sex with.

Period. Not healthy.

Second of all, this money came from a charity auction, where the good and the great of Irish poets, artists, writers and musicians donated their talent to raise almost 50,000 Euro. It is now conceivable that many of these people feel cheated and might think twice about their charitable donations in the future.

Thirdly, those organisations that raise money for Nepal/Africa/wherever might feel the fallout from any cynicism towards giving money to developing countries - they might feel less sure that their money will be well-used. O’Searcaigh was exposed by a documentary team, there are no such teams accompanying the majority of charity workers.

Lastly, there is the issue of whether or not his poetry should now be on the Leaving Cert course or not. Honestly, if we were to go though all the parts of the leaving cert course and weed out the inventors of science, the mathematicians, the historians, the geographers, etc., that constitute to that course and delete those parts of the syllabi that were developed by people with some kind of dodgy history, there would be a swiss-cheese leaving cert course left. So, I don’t see why his work should be taken off the course - if those who know about these things thought a year ago that his poetry had merit, then how does it not have merit today? I am presuming that the poetry is the important thing and not the poet? Well, for me (and I know very little about poetry), I have always been more interested in the poems than the poets.

Comments are welcome.

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