Familiar figure in sporting circles reveals inner poet

Athletic trainer James O’Toole has been a familiar figure on the sidelines of Galway’s sports pitches for two decades. But none of his colleagues or friends could have guessed that in their midst was a prolific poet.

“Some of them came to the launch and they were shocked. I wrote about some of them. They were certainly very surprised,” he laughs.

“When I was young, poetry was a bit poofish, a bit Galway 4-ish. In Henry Street you’d be a dead poet. But it’s the sexual revolution. If the gays can come out why not the poets?”

His self-published collection, called The Street, is intensely personal.

In My Reign is Over, he talks about how his “squaw” got impatient and left him because he was never home for dinner on time:
“She stole my thunder;
now I’m simply a cloud
No one respects a cloud
For all I do is go around weeping all day
For my squaw.”

There are several pieces about his daughter Jade, his sister – a nun – his father and about Henry Street where he was raised.

In the poem which gives the collection its title, The Street, he recalls a happy childhood.

“How could I forget my childhood?
Empty dark streets except
for our laughter
on the corner
huddled together
under a gable end
as the rain spat down
on midnight. Dan dominated as usual
with his tales of masturbation
tit feeling
we listened on
nodding in agreement though
knowing nothing of either.”

In the course of our interview, James quoted extensively from several of his poems, of which he seems intensely proud.

He has been scribbling lines since he was a young lad, inspired by his ‘Jes’ English Teacher, Dan Griffin – “the only class I managed to stay awake in” – and later during his stint in the then UCG studying arts and h.Dip under the tutelage of Professor Hubert McDermott.

“A class with Hubert in full flow on Shakespeare was as good as any piss up with the lads or a soccer match to me – and that’s all there was back then, there was no work, the place was desolate, he was a guiding light in those days.”

During his decade in America, he came second in a poetry competition with the Irish Voice newspaper, the proceeds of which were put to good use over two days of eating and drinking one Christmas.

It was only when back in Galway and a friend persuaded him to go to poetry class in 2009 that he pulled out all those scraps of old poems – which he labels his ‘babies’ – and revisited them.

Under the instruction of poet Kevin Higgins, class was held for two hours every Tuesday when the assembled poets and aspiring writers would dissect ideas and material.

On Mondays, from midnight until 3am, he would crack open a bottle of red and compose poems.

The process was a welcome distraction from the day job. He trained as an athletic trainer in Harvard University before setting up a sports medicine programme in UCD.

He then established his own sports injuries clinic in Henry Street and has worked with college, soccer and GAA teams up and down the country.

While his sister felt her poem, The Sister the Nun, was a little too “smutty” – talk of “topless ladies sway their breasts” no doubt raised eyebrows – he did run the three poems he wrote about his 15-year-old daughter by her.

There’s a lot more material in the coffers for any fans out there of The Street, available in Charlie Byrnes and Kennys book shops.

James has already plans to publish a second book.