Partly with that in mind, I decided to take a few shots on the phone when I went swimming in Salthill recently. Windows Movie Maker is handy for putting together simple films. So that's what I did this evening. Maybe the black-and-white makes it seem pretentious. I'm not sure. I'd be interested in hearing what people think of the results (both positive and negative comments are welcome). And if anyone has any thoughts on how to get poetry out there in different and original ways, feel free to share your thoughts. Thanks a million.
I've been thinking a lot about how to get poetry out there. It's pretty difficult, I have to say. Maybe I'm biased, but I think poetry deserves to have a more prominent place in mainstream society. I'm not saying everyone should buy poetry, of course, but I think it deserves a bit more of an audience. Partly with that in mind, I decided to take a few shots on the phone when I went swimming in Salthill recently. Windows Movie Maker is handy for putting together simple films. So that's what I did this evening. Maybe the black-and-white makes it seem pretentious. I'm not sure. I'd be interested in hearing what people think of the results (both positive and negative comments are welcome). And if anyone has any thoughts on how to get poetry out there in different and original ways, feel free to share your thoughts. Thanks a million.
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The Oscar Wilde Festival, Galway will kick off again in just under two weeks, and this year’s programme signals a step-up from last year’s incarnation. An Pucan bar hosts the opening, which will be launched by Michael Seeney, of the Oscar Wilde Society. Michael will also give a talk about how Oscar Wilde’s image/brand has been used on such items as record sleeves, perfumes, tea-towels and mugs in the 115 years or so since his death. I’ve heard Michael speak before, and know that he is a treasure trove of very entertaining stories about Wilde memorabilia and general Wilde-related topics.
This year’s festival also sees people getting out and about. A Wilde-themed walking tour begins at the steps of the Hotel Meyrick on Eyre Square, an event which takes place on Friday but is repeated on Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, on Sunday 6th at 10am, a bus will leave the cathedral car park, destined for Castle Ellen House, near Athenry. This is the stately home (filled with a fascinating collection of stuffed animals) which Wilde visited as a youngster, and where Edward Carson grew up. Carson, of course, is the man who prosecuted Wilde, leading to his two-year prison sentence, and ultimately his tragic demise. It is interesting to note that the two also attended Trinity College together, knowing each other long before their paths would cross so dramatically in court. There will be a talk and some refreshments served at Castle Ellen House, but hurling fans need not worry – you’ll be back well in advance of the All-Ireland Final throw-in. There will also be a talk on Wilde’s plays, given by Ian Walsh of NUIG. It will take place in the Harbour Hotel on Saturday 5th, and will be followed by the excellent 1999 film of Wilde’s play “An Ideal Husband”, starring Rupert Everett, Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett. All in all, this year’s programme seems to have a better dynamic than last year’s programme, which included some tenuous links to Wilde. Each event shows evidence of careful thought and planning, and is sure to entertain Wilde fans, whether those new to his work or those who can quote whole passages at random after a few too many whiskeys. Full details: Friday, September 4th at 5.30pm, An Pucan Bar (FREE EVENT): Festival Opening Friday, September 4th at 7.30pm, Begins at Hotel Meyrick (8/10 euro): Wilde’s Walking Tour of Galway City Saturday, September 5th at 12 noon, John B Keane suite, Harbour Hotel (5 euro): Wilde at the Abbey: How Wilde’s Plays Were Produced and Received in Ireland Saturday, September 5th at 2.30pm, Begins at Hotel Meyrick (8/10 euro): Wilde’s Walking Tour of Galway City Saturday, September 5th at 5pm, John B Keane suite, Harbour Hotel (FREE EVENT): The Face of Oscar Wilde: Perfumes, Cartoons and Tea-towels – Oscar Wilde in Words and Pictures Saturday, September 5th at 8pm. John B Keane suite, Harbour Hotel (8 euro): An Ideal Husband (film) Sunday, September 6th at 10am sharp, Bus leaves Cathedral Car Park (15 euro): Trip to Castle Ellen House – The Edward Carson Connection Sunday, September 6th at 11am, Begins at Hotel Meyrick (8/10 euro): Wilde’s Walking Tour of Galway City Sunday, September 6th at 6.30pm, An Pucan Bar: Festival Party Tickets available here: http://www.eventbrite.ie/e/oscar-wilde-festival-galway-sept-4-6-2015-tickets-17672386584 Simon Armitage was recently elected Oxford Professor of Poetry. There was something inevitable about Armitage getting such a prestigious post, so fat has his reputation grown over the past decade or more. And yet, he’s the kind of person you wouldn’t associate with such high esteem or pomp. From my experience of him in interviews and on TV, he seems the kind of person you could chat to in a pub for more than half an hour without realising he’s a poet. He comes across as a mild-mannered everyman – your local farmer, lecturer, binman, chemist or bakery owner. In short, despite the fact that poetry is so obviously central to his life (16 collections since 1989), his wears his verse lightly.
If you’re not too familiar with his work, Paper Aeroplane is a great place to start. These are poems that flit across the page with an effortless breeziness. You get the sense that he could polish off a few poems during half-time of a World Cup match (or, more likely, during the match itself if his national team, England, was playing). There’s a seamless craft to his work, the sense of something very unpretentious, but without the feeling of actively trying to create that impression. It just comes natural to him. From Book of Matches: “My father thought it bloody queer,/ the day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear/ half hidden by a mop of hair. ‘You’ve lost your head./ If that’s how easily you’re led/ you should’ve had it through your nose instead.’ ” That quote captures Armitage’s wit. There are echoes of Roger McGough in this respect. If I was asked to sum up Armitage’s main interest as a poet, I’d say it was people and their eccentricities, their stories. People in all their glory and all their silliness. In this, too, the influence of McGough shines through. Both poets write on a broader canvas than many modern writers, who seem to gestate images by adding the clotted blood of poems around them, and yet Armitage is well able to stop the reader in his/her tracks with a pitch-perfect image. One of my favourites was from “You May Turn Over and Begin”, and it, too, follows a person and his story: “One jot of consolation/ was the tall girl riding pillion// on her man’s new Honda,/ who, with the lights at amber,// put down both feet and stood to stretch her limbs,/ to lift the visor and push back her fringe// and to smooth her tight jeans./ As he pulled off down the street// she stood there like a wishbone,/ high and dry, legs wide open,// and rumour has it he didn’t notice/ till he came round in the ambulance// having underbalanced on a tight left-hander.” Armitage is so skilled that he could write on literally anything, and come up with a decent poem. From the everyday to the technical, you can feel his eyes darting about magpie-like behind these pages. These are poems that, for the most part, won’t have you scratching your head, but smiling quietly. “The Manhunt” describes the attempt to prod between the layers of a lover: “After the first phase,/ after passionate nights and intimate days,// only then would he let me trace/ the frozen river which ran through his face…Then I widened the search,/ traced the scarring back to its source// to a sweating, unexploded mine/ buried deep in his mind, around which// every nerve in his body had tightened and closed./ Then, and only then, did I come close.” There are a few obscure poems. For such poems to work, I think there needs to be something else of interest if the content proves a bit too opaque, something such as intriguing language or imagery. In many cases here, the language isn’t striking enough in these poems. They just don’t quite hold the interest, and are fairly unlikely to grab the reader. A cluster of prose poems appears near the end of the book, and these, too, lack the verve of earlier efforts. It feels as if they exist just to set up a joke. (Please note: this is not a good reason for writing a poem.) But none of this is enough to hamper a fine collection. It’s just a minor blip. If you want to read one of the best poets writing nowadays, check out Paper Aeroplane, published by Faber and Faber. I've written a few poems about football before (both Gaelic and soccer), but it really takes something special to do so (like memories of Ireland's success in the 1990 World Cup) or something pretty painful (like that night in Paris in 2009). Stephanie Roche's goal for Peamount United, nominated for the FIFA Puskas Award, provided one of those moments. I've watched it about 20-30 times, and I find the skill mesmerising every time. It's one of the best pieces of skill I've ever seen. Though not quite as good as Maradona's ballet dance through the English midfield and defence in '86 (video here), Messi's effort against Getafe in 2007 (here) or Southampton's amazing team goal against Liverpool in 1981 (here), Roche's goal is surely the best goal of the 2013/2014 season, and it would be great to see it get the full recognition it deserves. You can cast your vote here if you agree.
18 Yards Inspired by Stephanie Roche No-one can teach instinct. Only a striker who has it Can tame an awkward ball And stretch the net in two seconds. She knows the meaning Of subtly spoken body shape, How to throw a shadow on thoughts, To trust in skill. She'll lie in wait, then strike to kill Despite the trouble of a tight defence. You'll find skill, instinct or confidence In no manual, But you'll see them, sometimes, on a football pitch. Oscar Wilde, Lady Gaga and David Bowie – what’s the connection? Well, there could be many, you might say. But, in terms of this year’s Oscar Wilde Festival in Galway (September 5th-7th), the main connection is dress. Like Wilde, the two musicians (I use the term loosely in Gaga’s case) enlisted a flamboyant dress sense to promote themselves, and by extension, their careers. At 4pm in An Taibhdhearc theatre on Saturday the 6th, John Cooper explores Wilde’s use of dress and its parallels with modern celebrities. The talk is entitled Dressing Wilde: Wilde on Dress. Other events that feature in this year’s festival include a talk about Eva O’Flaherty, an Achill Island resident who claimed to be Wilde’s cousin, and included amongst her friends WB Yeats, Paul Henry, George Moore and Douglas Hyde. The free talk, Eva O’Flaherty: “My Cousin Oscar”, by Mary J Murphy, will be preceded by a short talk from a distant relation of O’Flaherty. Interestingly, the woman giving this talk has appeared in the acclaimed US TV show Breaking Bad. The first of the Saturday events (all of which are located in An Taibhdhearc) is a panel discussion considering Wilde’s reputation today, more than a century after his death in a badly-wallpapered Paris hotel room. The more intriguing aspect of Wilde Today: a panel discussion is whether Wilde’s life has affected his legacy. It could be argued that Wilde’s life overshadowed his work, but some might also argue that his work is read today mainly because of his dramatic life story. Either way, sounds interesting… A dramatic performance, Lady Wilde, is staged on Saturday 6th September in An Taibhdhearc at 8pm. The focus of this performance is one of the most colourful characters surrounding Wilde, his mother Lady Jane Wilde (aka “Speranza”). A staunch nationalist and poet, Speranza’s close bond with her son influenced him throughout his tumultuous life. Another dramatic piece closes the festival on Sunday 7th at 1pm in the Harbour Hotel by the docks. Kicking Oscar’s Corpse is a recently written piece by established performer/poet Brendan Murphy, and is potentially the event to look forward to most. It concerns the 1918 trial of Maud Allen, who staged a supposedly scandalous play based on Wilde’s play Salome. Allen’s own trial echoes that of Wilde remarkably, with even Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas (aka “Bosie”) making an appearance. All in all, a wide range of ideas and tastes are catered for in the second year of the Oscar Wilde Festival, Galway. It’s also good to see Wilde’s homosexuality being addressed to some degree by the inclusion of fashion stylist, and Ireland’s first openly gay TV presenter, Brendan Courtney, who will launch the festival. Of course, Courtney’s appearance is also apt considering the focus on dress. As Wilde’s sexuality was obviously very influential on his life and work, it would be good to see it addressed more directly in future editions of the festival. For now, though, the Oscar Wilde Festival, Galway is going from strength to strength. Check out http://www.oscarwildefestival.com/whats-on.html for further details. Pretty nifty return for only 100 words. From their own website:
"As one of the objectives of the Foundation is the value of the word and dialogue as a tool for uniting peoples, the slogan of this contest edition will be, Mandela: Words and Concord." Maximum of 2 stories can be entered. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested, please share, or check out the link below: http://www.museodelapalabra.com/en/short-tales-contest/4-edition/participation-form When I read anthologies of poems and fiction, including each new yearly edition of ROPES, I often find myself coming away with a sense of hit-and-miss, and there’s usually a little bit more “miss” than “hit”. This year’s edition of ROPES, however, in aid of COPE Galway, seemed to have a particularly high level of quality control. The theme here is “home”, and each writer’s name is followed by the name of the place he/she considers home, which is a nice touch. It’s also interesting to see multiple submissions from some writers, as most editions of ROPES include only one piece from each writer.
While the first few pieces seemed fairly average to me, things got going properly with Alvy Carragher’s poem “Our Attic”. It’s a nostalgic piece that doesn’t get too sentimental. Referring to a painting of Bambi on the attic wall, it ends with “In time, Bambi got blotted out/ and floors refinished, to sell it all off,/ but you can’t get glitter out of years of grit/ no matter how fresh or thick the coat of paint”. It’s followed by “Thunder and Ice Cream”, an enjoyable two-and-a-half-page story describing a thunder storm from a child’s perspective. It boasts lines such as “She said that under the stairs was the safest place in the house. The lightning would have to be very smart to find us and anyway it would have to bend and dive and everyone knows lightning doesn’t do that”. The first piece that really impressed me in a big way was Breda Speight’s simple, sad poem “Visitor”. It’s a quiet, visual poem that I could almost imagine as a silent short film. “Hardly anyone calls/ to our house anymore./ The rooms are dying;/ their blood bleeds/ in dusty corners, cobweb/ hammocks strung from picture/ frames between windows […] word has gone out,/ as word does when hedges/ become unkempt, dahlias turn brown”. Christopher Meehan’s poem “The Memories that Thaw” has some fine moments, like “pillows/ Told of children who slept with too much sand/ In their hair”, but ends too abruptly. We are told of people “huddled/ In the darkness during the storm of ’91”, but hear no more of this storm, which seems like an opportunity lost. Ruth Quinlan’s “Salthill Ferris Wheel” begins arrestingly: “I’m eager for a bird’s perspective/ on a place I know at sea level./ For the chance to see Galway Bay/ through the pinhole stare of a seagull”. There’s a bit of back-story here, which blends very well with Quinlan’s well-observed descriptions: “But this week, life is flat. Ironed out./ The routine’s carving furrows in my head”. The description of “a man who flashes sand-boy grins” is one of the standout moments. A couple are kissing below, before the poem ends on what seems to me a sad note: “I comfort myself with toffee/ and watch the sea watching me”. I was most impressed by the combination of story, imagery and tone here, woven deftly into each other. “Tapies”, despite an interesting title, was one of the few points where the standard seemed to drop. It felt very laboured and, at times, fairly clichéd. Compare the opening of Quinlan’s poem with the opening here: “Hot summers we played ball in the parking lot”. Much like the ball of tape featured in the poem, this piece just felt too flat. A decent poem with an interesting tone by Tim Dwyer is followed by Niamh Boyce’s “Tom”. It has a very minimalist feel, with only four verses of two lines each, mixing pathos and (what seemed to me) humour, all working together to create an effective poem. “I’ve gone and broke the spine/ of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying// Facebook tagged you in Sligo/ and for that second […] well I thought you were alive”. The next major highlight of the collection came with Maureen Gallagher’s short prose piece “Teeth”. It’s only a half page long, but it’s surreal and it’s brilliant. I was reminded of Little Shop of Horrors to some degree. A selection of lines don’t really do this justice, but anyway: “This house has grown teeth,” it begins. “They certainly weren’t here when I moved in last year […] They’re here now. I hear them at night. Grinding. Like the sound of sabres sharpening up for a showdown. I lie in bed imagining canines lengthening by the minute […] I called my doctor out for a home visit. It cost a fortune and he refused to do a goddamn thing about the chompers. Said I should go visit a head doctor.” It would be hard for anyone to follow that. Dean Buckley’s “Darkness Is the Absence” gets off to a good start, it must be said, but it fails to go anywhere interesting. As with most editions of ROPES, there were images as well as poems and fiction this year. Although the kind of paper used for the book doesn’t really lend itself to rendering images very well (the images are monochrome, and glossy paper might have proved more effective for those parts), there are some attractive visuals scattered throughout. The sketches/etchings of Nerina Burke made me stop and stare, while others seemed fairly nondescript, partly due to the limitations of the paper, I’d say. A very neat image of a cottage by Marion Clarke also halted my progress. I found myself trying to imagine a great bluster of colours emerging from the shades of grey offered here. Although it’s clearly a pleasing image, I couldn’t help but feel I was really missing something by not seeing those colours. Kevin Higgins is a perennial contributor to ROPES, so perennial that I’m tempted to compare him to Ryan Giggs. I’ve seen Giggs’s after-match interviews, however, and can confirm that Higgins has much more wit. I’m not a big fan of list poems personally, but his account of a live-in landlady’s request for various chores uses the device well, sketching an entertaining portrait of the lady in question solely through her own words. The standard remains pretty high until we get to “There are Two Ways” twelve pages later. While I certainly wouldn’t call this a poor story, it’s really too scatter-brained to get into properly, and the repeated phrase “there are two ways” at the beginning of every paragraph simply feels clunky and annoying. It does, however, have a worthwhile punch line at the end: “When I finished, they paid me in cash because, really, that’s the only way”. It struck me that it might have been more effective as a poem, getting rid of more than half of the material to achieve a good flow. A similarly unfocused story is “They Sold Their Calves in Spring”, though it’s full of brilliant touches which alone elevated it to one of the book’s major highlights. Here are only a couple of examples: “Growing up having a shop attached to your house had its ups-and-downs. You were almost destined to lose the fight against Nestle and Cadbury […] Only looking back do you realise how glad you are people come to wakes. They take a bit of the grief with them, shaking it out of your palms and into theirs, carried off to their own homes and corners”. “The Move” is a poem by Rachael Hanaphy-Pigott dealing with a mundane subject – throwing things into a skip – but the fact that all the items listed are abstract is unexpected and thrilling. “Several memories whistled in the breeze […] I threw the last of the harsh words in”. In “Nomad”, Aideen Henry deals with a poignant subject, dementia. The use of snatches of dialogue at the beginning of each verse, while an interesting idea, hamper the poem, rendering its rhythm formulaic. Similarly, a series of three poems by Ann Egan based on a specific event from Irish mythology offer some promise through the basic idea involved, but end up feeling a bit laboured. Quite a contrast comes with “Sunroom, Midnight”, which begins in a slightly clichéd fashion, but later becomes anything but clichéd, with wonderfully incongruous lines such as “Ten thousand yawning blossoms stretched down/ to laughter on the lake as an old man yelled/ about a fish fixed to the end of his grandson’s line”, “Tonight, the violet smear of the Milky Way” and “My old dog went deaf in this room.// A lightning bolt took his ears, split”. As might be expected with the theme of “home”, a vein of nostalgia runs through this year’s edition of ROPES. Although delivered pretty heavily in the first third or so of the book, the sentimentality quotient is nicely balanced overall. The main thing I took from the book was the solid level of quality throughout, with some pieces rising even higher than the normal standard here and a few dipping below it. The book finishes with a pair of poems by Máire Morrissey-Cummins, who has four poems in ROPES. “Seeking Light” presents an original idea, viewing the world almost solely through colour. Lines such as “I seek colour/ in rosy sunsets/ and in juice squeezed/ from blood oranges” are simple but effective, and the last poem of the book ends with a suitably high standard: “I vow to bend with the wind”. ROPES 2014: Home is available in the COPE shop on St Augustine St, Galway, in Charlie Byrne’s bookshop, Galway, or here: http://ropes2014.wordpress.com/ Proceeds go to COPE Galway, who do good work supporting the homeless, the elderly and victims of domestic violence, among many other services they provide. Cost: €10. On first listen, this album grated with me. Its self-conscious quirkiness just got on my nerves. Rarely, however, have I come across an album that lent itself to such a major change of heart by the third listen. Unless you’re already a big fan of the more playful side of Pink Floyd, Bjork and bands such as The Moldy Peaches, Bonne Nuit might take some getting used to, like an ember that needs some fresh breath to light up fully. Despite this, the first two tracks from My Fellow Sponges’s debut are probably two of the best. “Chill the Beans” is a nifty number embroidered with a Joanna Newsom-esque vocal. It also boasts some well-judged harmonies. The production on the following track, “This Dream Song”, gets even better. After a few listens, the surreal wackiness here is more likely to delight than infuriate. This is a pretty special song. For the first ten seconds of “Madness”, it feels as though you’re briefly transported to a Christy Moore gig, with bodhran dominating. Then, it gets very un-Christy. Donal McConnon’s vocal, which seems almost stage-Irish here, doesn’t quite blend with what we’ve heard before on the album. There’s a nice change in tone a minute from the end in this track, but this isn’t enough to save a generally unremarkable song. This could have been more effective if placed towards the end of the album, or left off it altogether. “Frozen Duck” is another rhythmic number. It begins promisingly, though it could have been developed in a more interesting manner. Gibberish lyrics work very well here, and McConnon’s toned-down Irishness sits more successfully with the varied sounds stitched around it (subtle drums, bass, clarinet and – I think – spoons and mandolin). “Hush the Waves”, again, could’ve been developed more, but its slow pace and perfect positioning at the mid-point of the album mark it out as a suitable shift for the album as a whole. “Home”, which follows, appears to be the deepest song on the album, with lyrics such as “The bottle drove her mad”, “Don’t ever give it up, now” and “She does grieve/ The lost child she did conceive” delivered very effectively by Anna Mullarkey. This song, however, does highlight the apparent lack of emotion in other songs. Maybe I haven’t engaged fully with the album’s themes – and there’s nothing wrong with an album that steers clear of emotional weight – but the simple, poignant lyrics and rendering work so well here that another song or two in this general vein might have been very successful. In any case, “Home” is an affecting number, with great harmonies creating a powerful atmosphere. Track 7, “A Foggy Ode”, is more obscure thematically (like much of the album), but simpler in sound. It’s another infectious tune with a pleasant rhythm – a mode which My Fellow Sponges seem most at home with. McConnon’s vocal suits perfectly here. It’s a pity that two relatively bland tracks follow it, but this is redeemed by the title track, which closes the album. Like “Hush the Waves” at the mid-point, this is another slow, rolling number. It mixes English lyrics with French, and serves as a well-chosen finale, releasing a quite new yet still consistent flavour. Bonne Nuit is certainly an album which takes you on a journey. If Lewis Carroll had decided to present Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an LP, he might’ve come up with something like this. The sheer array of instruments provides some idea of the scope and ambition here. This generally functions as a very coherent collection, despite the level of variety involved. Throughout Bonne Nuit’s twenty-odd minutes, we are presented with some wonderful vocals and harmonies, a ukulele, bodhran, harmonium, melodica, piano, drums, acoustic guitar, banjo, clarinet, bass, flute, mandolin and a glockenspiel. While a few songs are not so interesting, the album never gets absolutely boring. For me, it contains four or five very good songs, along with a couple of other pleasing efforts and two or three that could’ve done with a bit more thought and work: all in all, a very good return for a 10-track album. The songs are fittingly short, whisking the listener away to the inventive, eccentric world of My Fellow Sponges for a few minutes shy of a half hour. It struck me that this band would probably make a very good job of a concept album or a stage musical, such is their facility with theatricality and atmosphere. In fact, Bonne Nuit, French for “good night”, may indeed be that concept album, weaving its dreamy blanket over the rapt listener. Check out My Fellow Sponges here: http://myfellowsponges1.bandcamp.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Fellow-Sponges/138758152881243. The cover aside, Wayword Tuesdays, a collection of poems by seven poets, kicks off with a very original and frank foreword by Kevin Higgins, taking in the poetry scene and society at large. He briefly describes each of the seven poets. Each snippet is both astute and so much more refreshing than the typical sweeping observations of anthology forewords, though the hackneyed phrase “new voices” does appear towards the end. In any case, it’s hard to imagine this book getting off to a better start, with the appetite suitably whetted. Almost as welcome is the next observation a reader will likely make: the biographical descriptions of the writers are presented in the first person. This is reflective of the warmth and unpretentiousness that characterises much of the collection.
Breege Wardein’s seven poems follow. These contain some witty observations, but, for me at least, were generally quite underwhelming. Bernie Ashe delivers some moments worthy of excitement, her “Rebirth” providing some abstract imagery that reminded me of Bob Dylan’s more surreal lyrics: “a frost moon waits/ Pilgrim poets accept the trespass…hard piano tones of flight”. She also presents a notable trait of this collection: fantastic titles. In “For all the Barry’s I’ve Known”, the dominant tea metaphor is announced from the beginning, suggesting that a heavy, perhaps clumsy, analogy will follow, but Ashe administers the comparison skilfully. The poem’s end feels a bit premature, though. It could have been developed, eventually shedding the metaphor, but it’s an accomplished poem nonetheless. Her selection ends with the simple, sad “Brother”, expressing the profoundness of grief. There’s nothing particularly new in this approach to the theme, but it does capture something particularly evocative: “I long for an end to my grief/ but cannot see a way,/ through the permanence/ of your decay”. More on those titles: I was consistently thrilled to come across such names as “Song of Online Infatuation”, “Life Choices of a B-Movie Extra”, “The Matador Resurrects the Day”, “Looked Almost Real”, “One Woman’s Sardine is Another’s Poison”, “A Minor Concerto in Rahoon” and “My Ballyhappiness in 3D”. While simple, unassuming titles can sometimes be perfectly appropriate, it’s always a pleasure to encounter such careful thought in something that’s often a neglected aspect of the writing process. Ruth Quinlan’s bio is particularly engaging and informative. However, I found her poems generally lacked a similar level of vibrancy. One exception is the simple “Not Writing a Love Poem”, which resembled Ashe’s heartfelt “Brother” to some degree. Such simplicity of expression is used to great effect by Stephen Byrne. Though both simple and direct, his style is quite unique. Reading through his sestet of pieces, a sense of the old-school is conveyed, not in language but in subject matter. Ageing and creativity infuse much of his work. There’s a whiff of the Shakespearean sonnet, though no hint of such rigid form. “I Want to Strangle Mick Jagger” could have become an annoying diatribe against the Rolling Stones front man, but Byrne delightfully contorts this into a meditation on time and ageing. “Room Without a View” is atmospheric, quite like a short story, with lines like “I listened like a hunted deer”. “Passion” adopts an archaic tone, different to that of Byrne’s other poems, and less appealing. In a sense, though, the language befits a poem exploring the theme of creative passion, a subject that’s centuries old itself. “Take This Moment” again looks at time, and very much tallies with Byrne’s reference to Jim Morrison in his bio, but, unfortunately, it ends with a cliché, “the first kiss of dawn”, which lets it down. The final poem from Byrne displays his willingness to embrace variety and new territory, which is a commendable quality in any artist. “The Matador resurrects the Day” is a quite abstract, stream-of-consciousness piece, leaving the reader with a sense of curiosity, which is a nice taste to be left with when parting from Byrne’s work. Eileen Ni Shuilleabhain offers poems mainly based on short scenes or moments. “Past Lives”, her first piece, notably refers to a head “juddering”, and ends surprisingly, with evidence of careful thought. Close-up descriptions appear to be Ni Shuilleabhain’s forte, such as the following lines from “Returning”: “He nudges back/ tendrils of moss curls that/ clung for centuries/ hiding its face”. Dave Donovan’s “Looked Almost Real” is a somewhat suitably irreverent take on his father’s death, beginning “Our father who art buried/ in Rahoon”. A particular highlight of the collection comes in the verse that follows: “You would have been amused/ by two phone calls/ I made that day/ the hospital refusing to say dead/ as if euphemism could erase finality/ the other a wrong number/ Domino’s pizza not the Dominican church/ my joke on realising my error/ a different kind of takeaway”. “Stretchmarks” is an interesting poem that leaves the reader wanting more detail, but wisely gives just enough without offering too much. Donovan’s final effort was my least favourite of his poems, hampered by excessive repetition. It might have been best replaced by another poem, or at least not positioned as his abiding sentiment. On the other hand, a sense of leaving the best for last was quite palpable with Anne Irwin’s selection. I’ve been a fan of Irwin’s work for some time. Her poems are simple and entrancing. They’re very Irish, and particularly very Galwegian. One of the things I admire most about her work is how well she ends her poems. We hear winter speak in the poem “The Loneliness of Winter”, and it’s not often that I come across a conclusion as powerful as the following: “I beat Napoleon in the Russian plains,/ Hannibal in the Alps/ I froze the Prussians who sat down,/ iced the Siberian gulags.// Rejected I seem lonely now/ but the battle’s just begun./ Oil and gas will run out soon/ then you’ll see my power”. As with Byrne, variety is evident here, with “A Minor Concerto in Rahoon” projecting a fascinating picture of Galway roadworks that no longer hammer out their tune. “My Ballyhappiness in 3D”, the final poem of Wayword Tuesdays, is essentially a list-poem, and truly captures Irwin’s sense of the playful and the nostalgic: “Eamon Dev, ‘The Irish Press,’/ Farmers looking for Venus,/ Sisters rolling down the hill/ And cousins dumped in nettles”. Although presenting each author’s work separately would seem the logical approach in a collection such as this, I couldn’t help but feel that more mixing would’ve suited here, even if it was at the cost of structure or organisation. Some other framework might’ve worked successfully here, such as linking the poems by theme or subject. This would, of course, be somewhat arbitrary, and might lead to new problems in compiling the collection. In any case, the present structure isn’t all that bad; it just might’ve been wiser to place the work of Stephen Byrne, Eileen Ni Shuilleabhain or Dave Donovan closer to the front. Placing Irwin at the end, however, was brilliantly apt. I’d be surprised not to come across her work, and maybe that of a few other poets from Wayword Tuesdays, in various anthologies and individual collections relatively soon. Wayword Tuesdays is available in Charlie Byrne's Considering the upcoming Oscar Wilde festival to be staged in Galway, two questions arise: (1) Why hasn’t such a festival been established already? (2) Does Wilde have legitimate connections with the west, or was he only comfortable in the luxury of his Merrion Square home, the stately houses of London and the streets of Paris? I can’t answer the first question. As regards the latter (though I don’t think a “connection” is essential to justify staging a festival), Wilde’s link to the west stretches beyond the statue groped by tourists on Galway’s Shop Street. Wilde spent numerous summers as a child in Connemara and Cong, Co. Mayo. Even as a student in Oxford, he returned to the setting of his playful youth, where he hunted and fished the waters that ran near the Atlantic. Wilde’s reputation isn’t as healthy now as it might be. Sure, most of us are able to quote some of his wittiest one-liners, but his life seems to have overshadowed his work. I suppose that’s to be expected when you’ve lived one of the most tragic public lives ever to hit the news stands. Most of his poetry might rightly be considered overly ornate (with some exceptions), but Wilde’s drama, fiction, essays and children’s stories really are remarkable. There are regular celebrations of Yeats, Joyce and plenty of other worthy Irish writers. Why not Wilde? Is there a certain snobbishness aroused by his liberal use of irony and humour? When I watch shows like Seinfeld, Frasier and Father Ted, I can’t help but think of Wilde’s sense of the trivial and the absurd. It’s there in those awkward situations and the outlandish choices made by characters such as George (Seinfeld), Frasier and Father Ted. Still, Wilde has so much more to offer than a few laughs. The overlooked aspects of his work are addressed to some degree in the upcoming Oscar Wilde festival. Saturday 7th September sees the launch of the two-day event, followed by a talk on Wilde’s connections with the west, by poet and Wilde scholar Gerry Hanberry (admission free). The author’s most famous poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, is performed by talented storyteller Rab Fulton later that evening in the Town Hall Theatre studio. As part of the performance, props will be used to convey Wilde’s prison sentence. This includes a rope to reflect his experience of manual labour, where he was required to continuously pull on ropes, thus weakening and bloodying his hands to the point of being unable to write. On Sunday 8th, at 2pm, Ireland’s perception of Wilde at the time of his humiliating downfall is explored by Eibhear Walshe, a lecturer of English at UCC. The festival wraps up with a flourish in the Harbour Hotel, by Galway’s docks, on Sunday at 7pm. This event incorporates a red carpet reception, a two-course dinner, free wine and a show titled “The Importance of Being Oscar”. This is suitably dramatic, and delves into Wilde’s life and work, with actor Michael Judd assuming the role of various characters influencing the life of – in my opinion – one of Ireland’s greatest writers. The future for this festival appears promising. Its inaugural year has shown a level of depth, originality and intelligence in its planning, though subject to a limited budget, as all first-time festivals tend to be. Wilde deserves something greater in scale. Hopefully that will follow in future years through this festival. In any case, it’s great to see Wilde finally receive the recognition he has deserved for a long time. Saturday 7th September, 4pm (Busker Brownes, upstairs): Launch & Talk, “Wilde’s West of Ireland Connections”, by Gerry Hanberry (admission free). Saturday 7th September, 8.30pm (Town Hall Theatre studio): “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” performance, with Rab Fulton (5 euro). Sunday 8th September, 2pm (Busker Brownes, upstairs): Talk, “Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Ireland”, with Eibhear Walshe (free). Sunday 8th September, 7pm (Harbour Hotel): Dinner, wine and theatre, “The Importance of Being Oscar”, performed by Michael Judd (30 euro). Further details are available here: http://oscarwildefestival.weebly.com/index.html |
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November 2020
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