Martin Egan, my friend for too short a time, died in hospital at 2.30 this morning. He had been suffering from cancer. Martin was a songwriter, a poet, a visual artist, and a prodigious journaller of life’s many joys and tragedies.

I met him at a book launch downstairs at the Twisted Pepper in Dublin in 20**. I found myself standing beside him in a crowd. As we listened to some very bad poetry he turned to me and muttered something about the work being performed being a ‘load of total shite’. I looked at him for a second, really surprised and a tad aghast. He smiled knowingly at me and knowingly raised his eyebrows a little. Then we both burst out laughing. In the midst of all the gushing naval gazing self-congratulation, his candour was such a relief. And I had no idea who this person was at the time. We shook hands and sat down together. He told me that day he was working on a biography of his life and, typical of Martin, he told me all about it. From this we began a conversation that was continued over the years with meetings and phone calls and the very occasional reading that we did together.

He lived the life of a bohemian artist, wrote songs on multi platinum albums, painted haunting self portraits – some of whom appeared on the covers of his own albums, struggled and overcame many demons both internal and external, and wrote some of the most searingly honest poetry that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. For Martin a life that was not honestly depicted and examined through the lens of art was an inauthentic one, and he had no time for anything other than truth, in the fullest lived, completely subjective, warts-and-all sense of the term. His vast reading and highly intelligent grasp of the nuts and bolts of writing enabled him to clearly depict the raw edge of life, of the life of an artist, of the search for what it meant to be a human being in the world, of the peculiarly Irish aspect of the legacy of addiction and sexual abuse, of the terrible heartbreaking loss of loved ones, and the scars one carries from failed relationships. He wrote and sung of the immeasurable joy of pure artistic inspiration, of the loneliness of being and innovator and finding an authentic artistic voice. More than anything he sought to accurately depict his own story, as for Martin personal experience rather than all the reading and listening to music and viewing of art he did, was the testing ground for acquiring authentic knowledge.

 Martin was also one of the funniest men I have ever met, and the hilarity of some of the conversations we shared over the years will stay with me for as long as I live. A few weeks ago he called me while I was out in the middle of a wood and told me he knew he was near the end of his life and that he was okay with that. He then went on to say that he had given the matter a lot of thought and he had now compiled a list of people he was definitely going to haunt. Martin was simply irrepressible.

I admired his talent, his intelligence and his commitment to his craft. He would ring me up regularly and ask me what I was writing and how it was going, and after listening to me he would in turn tell me at length and in great detail just what he was working on, the books and various authors he was devouring in order to complete the various projects he was working on, and what was the true meaning of art and what was its place in a society that was so addicted to the most superficial and pretentious meaning of artistic achievement. Our conversations would go on for hours and I would often find myself late for other appointments and having to ring up and apologise and reschedule, so enthralled and tired I would be after these Olympian discussions.

More than anything Martin was my friend, and he was an immeasurably loyal friend. We never once argued and we never once fell out with each other. We were never short of a topic for discussion and I have never met anyone more supportive of the life of the artist both in principle or in reality. I cannot accurately depict how much I miss him, as I know his many other friends and admirers will miss him. He was such a unique and lovable man. And such a marvellous artist.

   A snapshot of a Last Wednesday poetry and prose reading taken by Sarah Lundberg in June 2010 with, from Left, Steve Conway, Bob Shakeshaft, Eamonn Lynskey, Oran Ryan, Martin A Egan, Raven and Ross Hattaway.

“For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments, [2]
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

from ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson