A Short History of the Potato: A Poem

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Boiled, it steams into the world on a plate

on a Sunday at the head of the table

with butter after church before a man

a father of five in a shirt and tie

and polished brogues and Old Spice with rough hands

from dairy farming stock near the north coast

with a glass of red and carrots and beef

who has a separate dish for the peelings

and a son who prefers them roasted

and partial to storming off when baited

by siblings about his weight or love objects

encountered at the Presbyterian youth club

the night previously and then there is mash

in a Pyrex dish adorned with a sprig of parsley

nobody eats or eats out of bravado

or boredom like the blond-haired brother

who is also partial to boiled above roasted

like the father who was reared on nothing else

in a family of eleven who would have marked

the start of summer by the first bag —

spoken of almost reverentially —

of Comber Earlies — their skin, the flavour —

or so it is reported, unlike his children

who eat them processed in waffle shape

with fish fingers made by the same

international frozen foods giant

with factories in Australia,

Europe and America, at the time of writing,

a time in which you’ll find the potato

in many guises: farled, hasselbacked, boxtied,

puréed, crisped, chipped, hashed, smashed,

French fried, triple cooked, cooked in beef fat,

champed, colcannoned, even volutéd, foamed,

not to mention the rosti which the aforementioned

father had with a ribeye and red wine sauce —

‘pretentious, too pricey and far too rich’ —

at his sixtieth birthday at a restaurant

which is no longer there on Shaftesbury Avenue

which is in Ulster renowned for its fry

which is known for its potato bread (fadge)

which the wife of the father would send

to the roast potato son when he moved away

to London where people who weren’t from Ulster

would say ‘potato, potato, potato’ in an Irish

You’ll-never-get-me-Lucky-Charms kind of accent

because they thought it was amusing

perhaps, in the kebab shop at the end of the night

where the chips were not satisfactory

unlike the kind he’d have in the back of the Montego

with his sister in the car park at Carryduff Shopping Centre

from the chippy whose name has been lost

but by all accounts was an amusing play

on words such as Fryer, Golden, Chip, Village, The

covered in salt and vinegar waiting on their mother

in school uniforms and unargumentative

Unargumentative, unargumentative

unlike the child (two at the time of writing)

that boy in the back seat who became a man —

after consuming an unrecorded number

of potatoes in their various forms —

went on to have with a woman, who

also enjoyed her potatoes, roasted

with a little seasoning and sprig of thyme

or rosemary or both and maybe even

an ever-so-slightly squashed garlic clove

on a Sunday with some meat and gravy

and maybe even some red wine and maybe even

their son who (two at the time of writing)

might not feel like not eating, who can, to be fair,

be relied upon to eat potatoes —

pending statistical analysis —

more than any other food type

and when asked to choose between chips or mash

says chips and mash which leads us to believe

he is his father’s father’s grandson

He is his father’s father’s grandson

the same grandfather who is remembered

for buying his son in punts a small overpriced

polystyrene tray of chips in Dublin

at one of the vans beyond the turnstiles

on the old Lansdowne Road covered

in vinegary ketchup and so much salt

it gave the sauce a grainy texture but how

good they were in the top tier of the West Stand

the day that Ulster won the European Cup

in 1999 despite the distance from the pitch,

the son’s dislike of heights, the lack of conversation,

the throng on the way out to the Dart, the stench

of Guinness and cigarettes everywhere,

accents thick as cold butter on bread, and faster

and faster such memories come back to him

and you can picture them, the two of them,

arriving too early, taking their cheap seats

in the top tier of the empty stadium,

looking out on a city that is not theirs,

far from home, and yet not that far, really,

on a Saturday, in their coats, huddled, not losing

their return tickets, eating chips and waiting

for everything to start and everyone to be there,

early because they were afraid of being late,

the son oblivious to the memory happening to him,

filling his face, and not saying thank you

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

is what the father demands the child (two

at the time of writing) says when given a crisp

or other potato-based snack such as

a Pom-Bear or Quaver, for example,

or even a standard Walkers Ready Salted

which the father would eat in ungodly

amounts as a teenager, and which he bought

from a vending machine in the John Radcliffe

during the son’s delivery

which he ate while wandering under the trees,

painlessly, which cannot be said of the mother,

who was whisked into theatre

for an emergency caesarean,

and was given two slices of toast with butter

and a cup of tea at half-three in the morning

as the child fed and did not feed and fed

and did not until it was fine, and everything

else was fine until it was not, again, and so on

And so, on to the past, let us turn

to a hillside of the Andes in Peru, say

5000 bc, give or take a few

thousand years, the morning sun

caught in the dew of the mountain grass,

the day yet to heat up, the air cool,

and a child is digging for fun, maybe,

around some flowers that are pink

and some white and some purple before

he pulls out a lump, caked in soil, and another

and another and doesn’t know what they are

because they could be stones or some kind of egg

and he smashes one against a rock and he chops

another in half and he sniffs it, and prods it

tentatively, and it is months before

he goes there again, and there are more

flowers, and he tries to bite one but hurts

his tooth and anyway it tastes of soil,

so he takes it to his father as if to say

what the hell is this anyway and the father

takes off his feathery headdress, and long red robe

and armour and looks a bit closer, and grunts

and throws it into a boiling pot — unpeeled,

unsalted, whole — to see what will happen

And what happened is recipes: papa

a la Huancaína, causa rellena,

lomo saltado, chuño, salchipapas,

and a Spanish invasion in the sixteenth

century, the conquistadors stashing

their ship full of spuds to bring relief

from scurvy, bringing them back

to Europe, and then a ban

in France for fear of the spread of leprosy

and then what happened

was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

Let us turn to Antoine-Augustin Parmentier,

let us turn to the eighteenth century,

let us turn to his prison cell

in the Seven Years’ War, the bare walls,

the hard, cold floor, a tiny window,

a rattle of keys, the clank of the door,

and a plate of boiled potatoes thrust through,

day after day until he realized

he wasn’t dying, let us turn to his release,

let us turn to his campaign to grow the tuber

instead of grain, let us turn to the farmer

who eventually gave in, let us turn to their

first harvest, let us turn to their children

sleeping soundly after dinner, let us turn

to the bouquet of potato blossoms

around the hat of Marie-Antoinette,

let us turn to the armed guards surrounding

his potato patch at Sablons

to make them seem worth stealing,

let us turn to the Faculty of Medicine

in Paris 1772

and their praiseworthy declaration,

let us turn towards the ghosts of famines

that never were, so when we turn

to fries in the car at the drive-thru,

or a bag of crisps with a pint at the pub,

or patatas bravas at the pop-up tapas today,

we might (in fact, let us) turn to him,

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

And we only can surmise that Antoine-Augustin

Parmentier would have approved

of ‘The Potato Eaters’ by Van Gogh,

his only ever portrait of a group, Nuenen,

at the end of the nineteenth century, unlike

the critics of the time who implied

the colours were too dark, the faces riddled

with mistakes, but — and we can only surmise —

Parmentier would have enjoyed the hands

of the figures, in particular, how gnarled

they seem, fresh from digging the patch,

the oil lamp, the clock striking seven,

the steaming pile of potatoes, the pouring

of the coffee, the table linen,

the peasant family living on their produce,

their humility, their grace, their ordinariness,

but, of course, we can only surmise all this

In the way we can only surmise

how similar this Van Gogh scene

was to a cottier’s cabin, say,

in Cork, let’s say Youghal, the town

where William H McNeill argues (1949)

Walter Raleigh was not the first importer

of the spud to Ireland, but instead proposes

that it probably was the Spanish passing through,

citing lack of evidence for the explorer’s case,

hinting he was propaganda for the British cause,

the English war hero helping Ireland —

and other sources don’t rule out how some got washed

ashore from the wreck of the Armada either —

but anyway, back to this Corkish, Van Goghish

Irish cottier’s cabin, the night before the rot sets in,

the joviality around the dinner table,

the talk of the town, how the wheat and barley,

the oat and the flax

are shaping up this year, the peat fire embering

in the hearth,

before the first cottier wakes, washes, walks out

to go about his day, inspect his crops

wondering about the little lesions on the leaves,

the whitish growth, the cold weather,

thinks how good is the good old Irish Lumper

How good is the good old Irish Lumper

and who could blame him, after an eight-fold

rise in population across two centuries,

a republic of bellies full of carbohydrate

cooked, according to William Wilde —

father of Oscar and chronicler

of that nation’s gastronomic backwardness —

‘with or without the bone or the moon’

which meant half-cooked

for slow release as they worked the fields

for the potatoes they’d harvest, they’d eat potatoes

in order to harvest potatoes in order

to eat potatoes and so on

and largely just the good old Irish Lumper

and such unseasonably wet weather

And such unseasonably wet weather again

he thinks to himself, as he detects a nasty

odour from the plant, the next day,

and the next day, and the next day,

as the rain keeps coming or doesn’t go

and the sun won’t dry the fields, won’t check

this fungus, this phytophthora infestans

the botanists would call it

Just as the botanists would call

the potato solanum tuberosum

but what help were the botanists

and Latin terms to the cottier

and his community of cottiers

and this country of cottiers

as the panic set in at the speed of blight,

the speed of spores and whitish growth,

the speed of stench spreading in a field of rain,

the speed of discovering a spud

that looks like a spud but isn’t, hollowed

out with rot, like some sick joke played by the earth

And like some sick joke the cottiers

watched as their other crops of corn, and barley

and wheat and meat were loaded up onto the boats

and sailed to England and the less we say

of economics that were laissez-faire the better

and the less we use the term ‘famine’ the better

and the less we say of Charles Trevelyan

the better and the less we say of the soup kitchens

the dismal soup kitchens he introduced the better

and the less we say of the mother

at the head of the queue as the stirabout gruel runs out

the better and the less we say of the shipped-out mutton

and the pork and the poultry and the butter the better

Better to think of dawn’s butter sky in Cove

or Cobh or Queenstown — call it what you will —

that unassuming harbour town in Cork

where ships set sail for Liverpool where ships

set sail for Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand

better to think of a mother and a daughter

who had walked their boots off to get there,

had made a journey to make a journey

out of here, out of hunger and into hope,

better to think of them walking up the gangplank,

embarking and chatting about the cottier husband

the father they’d left behind, the only photographs

of him were the photographs they’d gathered in their heads

the only written notes from him were written on the paper

of their hearts, their paper-thin hearts

as they set sail and watched St Colman’s Cathedral on the hill

and Ireland erase themselves

in the descending morning mist

And in the descending morning mist

under the ship’s skeletal rigging

shoulder to shoulder with the others onboard

who could blame them

for thinking they were through the worst of it

the days of waiting for one spud to come good,

to wake and wonder if today

would usher in a break in the weather

a week of uninterrupted sun

or at least a week of interrupted rain,

the look on her father’s face, his temper,

tested, how she’d never heard him shout

like that, or known him so quiet around the house

as if it were infecting him, the fungus,

as on board, from Liverpool, Atlantic bound,

America bound, hot meal bound, full tummy bound,

bright lights bound, green grass bound,

future bound, life bound, survival bound,

the hell-away-from-Ireland bound

someone coughs and someone else

and nobody thinks anything of it

And nobody thinks of anything

until the second day and the realization

of the rations kick in, a pound of flour

and three quarts of water, water

stored in manky whiskey casks

and flour from drums ridden with god-knows-what

to be cooked on the fires above the deck

with everybody pushing in at once

to make their puny batch of stirabout

puny porridge of Indian cornmeal and rice

and soon the fevers set in and soon

the bodies and soon the bodies overboard

and soon the sharks surround the ship

and follow it, but soon America

And no sooner did America arrive

than America wanted them to leave

the mother and the daughter who

by some miracle had made it through

the typhus and the cholera

and the scraps and the stink and the sharks,

released from quarantine on Staten Island

to find themselves not welcome in Manhattan

wondering if they should have gone to Canada instead

Instead there was the Know-Nothing Party,

‘No Irish Need Apply’, the tenement slums,

a predominating Protestantism,

a fear of Catholics taking over, thoughts,

endless thoughts of home, the husband, father,

St Colman’s Cathedral, as they swept

and cleaned the houses of the Upper East

together before returning to their room

at Five Points, the shanty town, Lower East

where one evening walking home

the mother bought a bottle of milk

from a street-stall vendor, so thirsty,

and with a little cash, the cold bottle’s glass

in her hand, the liquid rushing through her throat

but what is that tang of chalk, ammonia, Swill?

It’s Swill, that tang of chalk, ammonia,

was what the milkmen sold on the street

from stinking vats, the milk from dying cows

packaged with a fancy label, leaving

the mother to lie on her bed in their stinking digs,

kept alive for a little while longer

by visions, reminiscences of the potato fields

when they were full of white flowers, full

of her full husband hard at work, harvesting,

she harvested these memories, but left

to leave the world like that

To leave the world like that, to leave

her daughter to scatter her ashes

by the Lower Manhattan docks

the South Street Seaport looking back

in the direction from which they came

on the boats they’ve since called ‘Coffin Ships’

as she remembers sailing by Long Island for a week,

its green fields recalling Cork, Youghal, her father,

before Lower Manhattan’s skyline

honed into view, the spires of Trinity Church

ordained by King Billy in the 17th century

stood like the architectural equivalent

of ‘Welcome to New York; Taigs Out’

as they held each other’s hands

and made their way, hungry,

through the diseases of the city

to eke a living, hand to mouth

So, here’s to the eked lives,

the hands and mouths

of the hand to mouth

who never made America, Australia,

the ones who knew the emptiness

of empty hands and mouths

the ones who never made it to the coast

of being sated, the other shore

across the water from their hunger

And across the water of hunger’s history

we arrive in the present day,

the plentiful present day

where even a pandemic

cannot stop the great big gears

of agro-industry, the giant John Deere wheels

of the potato harvester ploughing on

in seemingly endless desert fields in China

responsible for a third of the world’s output

with hundreds of thousands of metric tons

of French fries alone in ’20/’21

unlike this patch of the Killyleagh Road

where now we arrive in the present day

a day of plenty enough

where the aforementioned grandfather

unearths a number of early British Queens

behind the pig shed

fills an old meal bucket full

and brings them to the kitchen

to his son, home with his wife

and sons for a summer holiday

from where they live in England,

he brings them to the kitchen

still with the soil on

and the son washes, then seasons,

then roasts them not turning them at all

not opening the oven once

so that the bottoms crisp up, almost burn —

a synonym for the Maillard reaction —

come off easily with a fish slice

and they sit at the table

with mayonnaise and tomato sauce

and they eat until the potatoes are history

and they themselves around a table

in a bungalow in County Down

with the grandfather 80 at the end of year

and still with his bowl of boiled spuds to himself

still steaming in the evening light

through the patio doors

are history too

this family who’ve taken their place

at the stretch or starve table of history,

the table of history where it must follow

that history is a history of the potato.