Hard-hitting but witty Northern Irish poet
Sam Gardiner, who has died aged 79, was a distinguished member of the generation of Northern Irish poets that also included Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon.
While Mahon traded Protestant Ulster for visions of exotic elsewheres, Gardiner was adept at uncovering his sceptical humanist visions closer to home. In his poem Protestant Windows, winner of the 1993 National Poetry Competition, he transplants the violence of the Reformation to a quiet suburban close. Arguing with some PVC window salesmen, a defender of the sash-cord window (introduced by King Billy, he claims) is martyred when the window descends unexpectedly on his head, leaving him “reel[ing] /towards eternity”.
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