Sinéad McClure – Don’t be afraid of the dark

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2025

Don’t be afraid of the dark by Sinéad McClure.

Jho Harris was a radio producer, editor, podcaster and supporter of the arts.
He died on the 22nd of January, 2024, at 11pm.

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The night my husband died there was a temporary calm, after a storm. It was close to midnight and I was on autopilot.  My world had stopped. I was trying to avert a tailspin, figuratively and literally as I manoeuvred the car past the hotel I had booked into, and headed out across town for home.  There was something primal in my reasoning; I needed to go home because that’s where my husband would be.  Pulling left into the rural Irish town I live in, everything was in darkness.  The storm had done its damage, we were in blackout. Now our home was cold, dark and lonely.  I was in some sort of shock, aided by a glass or two of sickly red wine, and a tearful call to my oldest friend.  It was the darkness that seemed both fitting and disturbing. It was also a sudden realisation that life would never be the same again.

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.[i]

It isn’t all darkness, though, is it? As Anne Sexton says in her poem about Van Gogh’s painting, there is something transformative about how night is perceived. In my case the town did not exist either.  For that night and as it turned out the night after too, the lack of power – left me in a deep mourning, accompanied by the cries of foxes. The ghostly songs of foxes happen at this time of the year, but on the night my husband died it was as if the foxes knew.  The blackness of a collective grief, boiling with stars.

Having electricity is something us westerners take for granted now.  My parents remembered an Ireland without it. I remember a childhood of no central heating, of chilblains, and their raw potato cure. Not wanting to leave bed on a frosty January morning.  I remember at least two Christmas’s with my husband where we had no electricity and no running water. Memories that aren’t a hardship, like Sedaka sang, sometimes, I miss the hungry years.[ii]  However, organising a funeral without a full phone charge or access to a computer was impossible. I rang my provider it would be another three days before this outage could be rectified.  I rang back and explained my predicament. My husband died…I didn’t really need to go into any other details. In typical, warm Irish fashion the lady just replied, leave it with me.

Half an hour later the electricity linesmen were outside my gate, less than twenty minutes later I was fully connected to the grid. The first thing I did was turn on my computer and listen to my husband.

And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman
Is still on the line[iii]

Let me tell you about Jho Harris.  He was born in 1957, in County Wicklow, the youngest of four siblings. From a very young age he knew what he wanted to be in life, but in Ireland in those darker days, wanting to be a radio producer when you were working class wasn’t an option.  He would get a more sensible job. This wasn’t for Jho though.  He started working in pirate radio in the 1970s.  He was a disc jockey.  A man who had a voice butter soft and deep, perfect to accompany the discography.  He had a huge passion for music, not just for listening to it.  He wanted to curate it.

When I met Jho he was a radio producer for a talk radio show that I had begun working on.  We were instantly drawn to each other. I didn’t think I had anything I could offer radio, but Jho showed me otherwise. He taught me how to edit. He taught me how to broadcast, how to present. He also opened my ears to an expansive, varied collection of music.  In our early dating days he made me mix tapes, and up until two days before he died he was doing the same, albeit in the mp3 digital format.  Together we produced the arts programme for the Northwest and Western region of Ireland for a decade.  He interviewed a myriad of people from Joan Armatrading to John McGahern and all disciplines from visual art through to music and literature. He had a certain style.  It was conversational, compelling to listen to. In recent years Jho was the series producer and editor of many of our children’s radio dramas for RTEjr radio. He championed the arts and did most of his work for little or no monetary reward.  He set-up a podcasting site years before podcasts were a popular medium.  He was a kind of revolutionary with a brilliant mind.  When I listened back to Jho two days after he died, he made me laugh. I knew missing him would be all encompassing but the memory of his voice would always be my light.

 We sat and watched the darkness close
—like a slow galleon under black sail
nearing; and grew conscious again of those
of our loved dead who might come[iv]

For some the dark is a great phobia.  Leave the light on.  Open the door a snatch.  Can I bring a torch to bed?  Does it matter if I fall asleep with the television on?  Where will darkness take me?

Jho had a metastasized brain tumour, and one of the many vagaries of this despicable disease is the inability to sleep.  His only reprieve from a brain that wanted to end him every day was music.  He craved the dark.  He wanted the peace it could bring.  This essay marks a year since Jho left.  I began writing this in December during another blackout.  This one went on for almost a week.  I had to adjust to my solitude.  I managed to find an enviable space with my own thoughts.  The light from a crackling fire, such starry, starry nights. I drank better wine, opened the Christmas brie, listened to classical music that made me cry, argued with talk radio, lit candles, cuddled my dog.

A storm bookended the year, a year where there has been a lot of darkness, not just personally, but globally.

I can’t even begin to place myself in some of the deep, dark holes that humanity has had to endure in 2024 only to say I have dipped my toe in.

When I turned back,
near sleep, to hold you, I could pray
our dead content again under black
sails, the tide brimming, then falling away[v]

But listen, don’t be afraid of the dark. It is the dark we came from and the dark we go back to.  It is a good night’s sleep.  It is the shadow that falls softly. It is the light returning.

Jho Harris was a radio producer, editor, podcaster and supporter of the arts he died on the 22^nd of January, 2024, at 11pm.

[i] Anne Sexton, The Starry Night, The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton,Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981

[ii] Neil Sedaka, The Hungry Years, Sedaka/Greenfeild, 1975

[iii] Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman, 1968

[iv] John F Dean, Late October Evening, The Instruments of Art, Carcanet, 2005

[v] John F Dean, Late October Evening, The Instruments of Art, Carcanet, 2005

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©Sinéad McClure

Sinéad McClure has published two chapbooks, her poetry can be found in anthologies, magazines and online. Including The Stinging Fly, South Word, Live Encounters and Ink Sweat & Tears. In 2024 she was highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and graduated with a first, MA in Creative Practice from ATU Sligo with a special award for innovation for her Epic Poem “Nádúr”.