Cavan priest launches CD

A Northern Ireland based priest and accomplished poet, who has written over a hundred poems, has just published a CD chronicling his life and work as a cleric.

The Rhythm of the Ordinary records Fr. Martin Kelly’s boyhood in Bailieboro, Co. Cavan and his varied career as a priest in Belfast and Portaferry, County Down.  

The CD includes biographical detail, Fr Kelly’s insight into life in Belfast during the Troubles, and reflections on the New Testament.

It also includes 39 of 120 poems he has written over the last six years that were inspired by four distinct stages of his life.  

These range from life as a boy in rural Cavan, the often strange events in a priest's life, the Troubles in Belfast, and life in general.  Fr Kelly has already seen several of his poems published in anthologies by Windows Publications.

The poems recited in the CD include one entitled The World of Ether  about his last conversation with his mother before her death in a hospital in Cavan in 1955 when he was a student at St. Pat's College and had to cycle in the morning she died.

"It's a description of a young teenager who was unable to cope with the situation and his mother talking to him and I knew she was dying," he explained. 

Others describe the kind of lifestyle people had in the 1950s and the day-to-day work of a priest, including trying to comfort people about to die. 

One, called Long Kesh is about a Mass Fr. Kelly celebrated for prisoners in the jail on All Saints' Day in 1974.  

"They gathered around for Mass in the open frosty air and I didn’t know if the Mass meant much to them," he recalled. 

Fr. Kelly said he was always interested in poetry but never tried to write it until he went to work in Portaferry, Co. Down, where he moved to after 34 years in Belfast.

For the past year, he has been serving as PP priest in Drumbo and Carryduff, Co. Down.

The CD is available from selected outlets including Veritas shops.

He said he finds that people “hear their own story” somewhere in his CD and he now hopes to have more of his poetry published in book form.

SIC: CIN/IE