Want to find out more about the Northern Slant team? Every week we put 10 questions to our community of contributors – about them, their interests and hopes for Northern Ireland’s future. This week’s interviewee is Fionnbharr Rodgers. You can follow Fionnbharr on Twitter @FionnRodgers .

 

1. Tell us about yourself and why you got involved with Northern Slant.

I started writing for The Gown, the student newspaper at Queen’s, in the final weeks of my last dissertation. It was a happy exercise to get my head out of my brain and think about something other than the topic which had come to dominate my thinking in that September, and the months prior. I enjoyed the experience and got a lot of good feedback from the piece and so have carried on writing along the way; finding various political blogs on the way, and coming to think of writing as a potential career.

 

2. Describe Northern Ireland in five words.

Difficult: there are six counties.

 

 3. What makes you proud to be here?

“Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a f***ing genetic accident,” said George Carlin, speaking of his ethnic origins (his father was from Donegal, and his maternal grandparents were Irish). In the same routine he expressed his confusion over the concepts of national and ethnic pride, and instead said that he was “happy” to be an American. This more closely relates to my own feelings than does this question.

Understanding “joy” in the sense in which CS Lewis describes it, meaning contentment, this is what I feel whenever I’m in Camlough in South Armagh, or standing somewhere in the Mournes I feel a sense of this kind of joy with the current minute I find myself in. That thought is a lovely place to be.

Carlin also quotes the old proverb of “pride goeth before a fall,” and this seems relevant as well. Perhaps if more people were happy to live here, rather than proud of it – through flag flying overhead or the beat of the drum past their door – there would come a greater sense of joy and fulfilment which might be represented in our politics. I am also reminded by the words of Seamus Mallon, speaking last Tuesday at Queen’s University Belfast for an event in commemoration of twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, he said of Northern Ireland/the North of Ireland/the Occupied Six Counties/the Province, “I don’t care what they call it, so long as it has one name: home.”

 

4. Are you hopeful for the future?

Yes, as despite the popular trend towards pessimism there has never been a better time to be alive than the present day, in terms of literacy rates, life expectancy, and even global safety.

I was born in 1994 when there were an estimated 100,000 global cases of wild Polio virus, and when my grandfather was born in 1903 it was a straightforward death warrant; last year there were sixteen cases. Similarly the number of children in schools around the world is the highest it has ever been, and so is the number of adults who can read. Babies have never been as healthy and likely to advance to adulthood as they are now.

In the Northern Ireland context it is understandable why people are disheartened, frustrated, and/or depressed by the passionate inertia which is forever on display at Stormont. As Tony Blair said last Tuesday, “we should compare where we are, not with where we would like to be, but with where we were.” 1994 was the year of the Loughinisland massacre and other events which put it into a culture of misery. It was also the year of the ceasefires, which, despite persisting problems, on the whole created a peace we now have the luxury of taking for granted.

 

5. If you could change one thing about Northern Ireland what would it be?

Coleraine.

6. Favourite NI celebrity?

Aslan. Though I’m slightly biased, considering he’s a neighbour.

 

7. Politician you most admire, from outside Northern Ireland?

It seems a bit of a cop-out here to suggest Michael D. Higgins, as I feel I should go a wee bit further afield than an hour on the train.

In that spirit, I would suggest Jimmy Carter. He did not let electoral defeat become a personal defeat and definitive, but instead had dedicated his life to the same principles of human rights and dignity which defined the objectives of his political career. Anyone volunteering for Habitat for Humanity at the age of 93 deserves at least a modicum of admiration.

 

8. Favourite Place to Bring a Visitor?

Rostrevor. Unlike the Co. Antrim Tourist Board – or the Northern Ireland Tourist Board as it does prefer to be called – which has an inexplicable obsession with the Giant’s Causeway and the Dark Hedge’s, I cannot think of a better place for a traveller wishing to experience Northern Ireland at its best.

Kilbroney Forest is the place CS Lewis referred to as his own idea of Narnia, and to stand at the top of Slieve Martin, looking across at Slieve Gullion and Slieve Foy, one can easily imagine an army of dwarves or the Fianna charging down those slopes in the pursuit of Ulster’s enemies, or perhaps a succulent looking deer. Anyone who does not possess a mental encyclopaedia of Irish knowledge will surely benefit from watching the tide to and fro, and the border along with it, in a place where people are generally just happy to be.

Aside from the stunning natural beauty, there are the places themselves which seem to hold a Feilé every other Tuesday: from the Fiddler’s Green in Rostrevor, to the Blues on the Bay in Warrenpoint. Add to those facts that a pint is only £3.10 and I don’t see how anyone could be disappointed.

 

9. Potato bread or Soda bread?

Potato; but I assume you mean farls.

 

10. Snow Patrol or Van Morrison?

Van Morrison; I couldn’t name a song by Snow Patrol, and I became slightly obsessed with Too Long in Exile around New Years.

 

Also published on Medium.