FRED JOHNSTON was born in 1951 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 
Educated there and Toronto, Canada. Lived for a time in Spain and Algeria. 
Attended St. Malachy's College, Belfast and Cregagh Technical College, Belfast. 
Moved to Dublin in 1968 and Galway in 1976. Has read frequently here and in France, 
including the universities of Toulouse and Poitiers; at Poitiers, he delivered a paper 
on contemporary Irish literature North and South, 1969 – Present. 
Has delivered papers elsewhere, including to the John Hewitt School, Armagh, Northern Ireland, 
on the relationship between Irish writers and politics in our time (July 2003). 
Writers’ Residency at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco, September-October, 
(2004) funded by the Ireland Fund for Monaco.


Received Hennessy Literary Award for prose in 1972, judges V.S. Pritchett and James Plunkett. 
Received Sunday Independent Short Story and Poem of the Month awards in 1981 and 1982. 
Co-founded, with Neil Jordan and Peter Sheridan, The Irish Writers' Co-operative in 
the mid-Seventies. Has published two novels, six collections of poetry (True North, Salmon Poetry, 
published April 1997), had three plays performed. A collection of short stories, 
Keeping The Night Watch, was published Summer (1998). Has written a novel set in North Africa 
(with literary agents Lora Fountain & Associates, Paris) and compiling new short story collection. 
A novel, Atalanta, was published last year (2000). Being Anywhere - 
New & Selected Poems (Lagan Press) launched February, 2002. Bursaries in Literature from 
Northern Ireland Arts Council (2000) and Arts Council (Republic) 1988/2001. 
Founder of Galway's annual international poetry (now literature) festival, 
CΪIRT, (Cϊirt Fhilνochta Idirnαisiϊnta na Gaillimhe) in 1986. Writer-in-Residence, 
Galway City library, 1988/89. Founder and Director of a writers' centre for the West, 
Ionad Scrνbhneoirν Chaitlνn Maud, Gallimh.  Commissioned recently to write a series of 
stories based on Celtic myth for the O’Brien Press .  Winner of  Prix de l’Ambassade 2000, 
to work on poems by Michel Martin. ‘Paris Without Maps,’ a sequence, published 2002. 
Has published translations of work by Martin and Babacar Sall (Translation Ireland magazine). 
New Collection of poems from Bradshaw, including some translations from the French, 
at the end of 2004. Poetry and short stories have been published widely, in this country, the US, 
Australia, Canada, broadcast by BBC radio, RTE, and BBC World Service. Poems have appeared, 
for example, in the TLS (Times Literary Supplement), The Spectator, The Independent (London), 
The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Irish University Review, Poetry Ireland Review; prose in, 
among others, The London Magazine, Stand, anthologised by Pan Books, and in The Literary Review, 
The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review and Southern Humanities Review (USA).  
Story in  Phoenix  Irish Short Stories 2000,  ed. David Marcus. Further information on published 
work can be supplied on request. (Books can be viewed on amazon.com). ‘Paris Songs,’ 
a sequence, published October 2002. ‘Mapping God – Le Trace de Dieu’, a novel, 
in English and French, published October 2003 and launched in Galway and Paris. 
Irish Contributing Editor for New York-based ‘Rattappallax’ magazine.
 


 

INITIATION
 
Tic-tac, tic-tonc
I met Madelon
Tic-tac, tic-tonc
She was doing her washing in the little valley
Tic-tac, tic-tonc
I lifted up her slip
Tic-tac, tic-tonc
She gave me a slap!
Tic-tac, tic-tonc
 
A cheeky brat
Always gets his reward:
Tic-tonc, tic-tonc.
 
 
			- trans. Fred Johnston
 
{A translation of Premiers Ιmois, from Mesccia (1986), a dual-language collection, in 
Monιgasque and French, of  stories and poems by Mme. Paulette Cherici-Porello based on 
traditional Monιgasque writing or oral stories. The word ‘mesccia’ denotes songs and rhymes 
around Christmastime.The collection is in Monιgasque and French. The original title is, in 
Monιgasque, ‘Primu Gilecu’, or first ‘waistcoat’, a title given to adolescents who wore their first 
waistcoat upon leaving childhood – in French, the poem is entitled ‘Premiers ιmois’, or ‘first 
stirrings’. Even in English the underlying bawdiness of the poem is clear enough: the French 
word marron can mean a slap, but can also mean a chestnut, which might be slang for a number 
of things. Monιgasque, the indigenous language of Monaco, is a mix of Northern Italian 
(Ligurian) and Provencal. Alas, it too is tending to die out. The French word tontaine is neither 
‘aunty’ – tantine – nor uncle tonton. They are used here merely as onomatopoeia. Therefore, I 
tried to insert a suitable replication. 
 


CAT
 
Cat, little cat
Why do you hide in the garden?
Cat, little cat
Come and play with me.
Cat, little cat
Look, I’m small too, 
Come and play with me.
Cat, little cat
I have tied a string to a pretty cork,
Come play with me
Cat, little cat. 
 
 
-         trans. Fred Johnston
 
(A Monιgasque nursery song, Gatu, Gatin set to music by Charles Vaudano. >From Mesccia, by 
Mme. Paulette Cherici-Porello. I and my partner,  Sylvia Crawford, were privileged to be able to 
play this tune before Prince Albert of Monaco on St. Patrick’s Day 2005)
 
 
 
 
CARNIVAL SONG
 
 
Dance on the landing
Dance in the basement
Dance on the Rock,
And bad times be gone!
 
Dance on a big drum
Dance in the street
Dance on the boiling sea
Let my worries be gone!
 
Carnival, carnival
Get up, there, you animal!
I’m knackered from dancing,
From laughing, from having fun.
 
 
			- trans. Fred Johnston
 
 
 
{Et Vive Carnaval! (‘E Viva Sciaratu’ in Monιgasque) is a lively, puckish celebration of carnival 
time. It is also a tune.  ‘Le Rocher’ will not do here (line 3, first stanza): the phrase in 
Monιgasque is “sci’a Roca”, the sloping rock upon which the Palace and Old Town of Monaco 
(Monaco-Ville) sit. This poem is from Mesccia, by Mme. Paulette Cherici-Porello. I am grateful 
to Mme. Paulette Cherici-Porello for introducing me to her work over a very courteous first 
meeting at Font Vieille and more recently there to intimidate my translations.}
 
 
from LA PLEINE LUNE
 
: for Desmond O’Grady :
 
The sea’s grace
in the words you’ve given her
and the sun blazes
from the fire you’ve put there –
 
O seaful of casual dreams
Let me pour into you
A languidness
Of hot anticipation
A wild tumbling
Of ecstatic madness
Rebirth, 
A chant that heals me
A moment of becoming
In a last glance - 
 
In that missing second,
Eternity itself is lost.
 
 
MANSOUR M’HENNI (translation Fred Johnston)
 
{Mansour M’Henni was born at Sayada, a village in Tunisia. Writer, academic and critic, he 
has published a number of collections of poems and other writings. This is an extract from a 
section in his collection, Crιencontres – prιface de Salah Stιtiι, published by l’Or de Temps 
(2003) Tunisia}
 


TO MASTER GRENOILLE, A BAD POET
 
 
Well you resemble a frog, 
If not in matters aquatic: 
But as she dabbles in water,
Thus you in the arts poetic. 
 
		
-          CLΙMENT MAROT (1496-1544) (trans. Fred Johnston)
 
 


A maistre Grenoille, Poete ignorant
 
Bien ressembles a la grenouille:
Non pas que tu soys aquatique;
Mais comme en I’eau elle barbouille,
Si fais tu en l’art poetique.
 
 
 
{Clιment Marot was born in Cahors, his father, also a poet, was from Caen.  Marot entered the 
service of Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur of Villeroy and secretary to Louis Xll. He has dedicated his 
Le Temple de Cupido to him. In a vigorous and adventurous life, Clιment Marot was imprisoned 
on several occasions, translated the Psalms, was condemned for heresy – to confiscation of his goods 
and to death – witnessed persecution of Lutherans and saw his Psaumes placed on a list of 
‘forbidden’ books. He died in September 1544 at Turin. Most directly known for his ιpitres, often on 
love and equally often dedicated to prominent officials. Some of his ‘epigrammes,’ such as the one 
above, are quite scurrilous, with titles like ‘D’ung gros prieur,’ and ‘De Frere Thibault,’ which 
opens with the lines: “Frere Thibault, sejournι, gros et gras,/Thibault de nuict une garse en 
chemise/Par le treillis de sa chambre, ou les bras/Elle passa, puis la teste y a mise, . . . .”}
 
 
 
 
LOUISE’S FUNERAL
 
 
When Louise died, aged just fifteen
A flower gathered up by wind and rain,
Her funeral had no crowd to follow it
Just a solitary priest, praying his bit;
And an altar-boy, in gaps here and there,
Answering his priest’s bass-voice prayer;
Louise had nothing, and even in death
The rich have pomp, the poor have faith:
A boxwood cross and torn morgue sheet
Made her funerary bed complete;
But when the gravedigger took her up
From the village of her birth to her final stop, 
A sniffling fret-bell ringing overhead
Told every acre and ditch their girl was dead:
That was the way of it – in green corn,
Through groves of weepy trees, thick broom;
Down gullies wrapped in natural spice,
Her cortege climbed with the morning’s rise;
Flecked on the way by a snow of flowers,
The untouchable funeral had its tears,
Rigged out in red and white, a hawthorn bush
Star-spotted on each fidgeting branch;
So, incense and choirs she had to infinity,
Lofts of birdsong, a whole earth’s polyphony. 
 
 
JULIEN-AUGUSTE-PΙLAGE BRIZEUX (trans. FRED JOHNSTON.)
************************************************************************
 
 
{A translation of ‘Le Convoi d’une pauvre Fille’, by Julien-Auguste-Pιlage Brizeux, 1806-1858.         
Brizeux was born in Lorient; his family came to France from Ireland around 1688. In the  original, 
Brizeux  emphasises such words as ‘vierge’ and ‘virginal’, which may have been intended to draw 
comparisons with the Virgin and so on, but I chose to go another way. Similarly, Brizeux has a 
wonderful play on words in the phrase, ‘les vallons embaumιs,’ and again I’ve gone a more prosaic 
route in English, while trying to convey something of the meaning in French with ‘wrapped’ and 
‘spice’.  Brizeux seems to have had something for ‘lost’ or ‘imagined’ woman; as in his poem, ‘La 
Maison de Moustoir,’ which arguably heralds Alain Fournier’s ‘Le Grand Meaulnes,’ (hardly the 
only poem to do so) and itself recalls Poe’s preoccupation with lost paradises and love betrayed by 
death. Poe was translated into French by Baudelaire in Brizeux’s time}