President Conner reflects on Irish poetry and history
Referring to the plight of refugees from Ukraine and across the globe, President Marc C. Conner draws on Irish poetry and history as he reflects on the meaning of exile and the search for home in a special message to the Skidmore community.
Conner, a literary scholar, has traveled extensively to the island, taught numerous courses about Ireland, and published multiple scholarly articles and two books on Irish literature and film.
In his message, Conner describes the long history of emigration from Ireland and its recent decision to accept 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.
“This show of common humanity does give one pride in the spirit of the Irish,” he says.
He describes the Irish experience of “leaving home in the hopes of finding home” as a motif that continues to resonate today “as borders and migration define the human experience perhaps as never before.”
Conner also quotes from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” the most famous poem by William Butler Yeats, which the poet wrote in exile in London.
“Yeats’s poem captures the emigrant experience for generations of Irish — remembering with love and affection the home of their childhood to which they cannot return — and the emigrant experience of so many others, for indeed the past century seems to be a catalog of exile, migration, wandering, and homelessness.”
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
