Artist In Ireland

It has been awhile since my last post. No excuse really but my own editor nagging every now and then , telling me to get back at it and while I’ve tried , I haven’t tried all that much. But now, suddenly I feel a jolt , a burst and dare I say a joy at returning to the old blog and rolling on with whats been happening here at Artist in Ireland.

Hords, I tell you.. Tons of stuff… But where o’ where to begin?

The first big thing of the summer for me was my collaboration with video/film maker Stephen Rennick. We chatted in May about the things that happening in our town of Drumshanbo and discovered that there wasn’t anything on the boards for the August Bank Holiday weekend, so we decided to make an event. We created The Written Word Weekend. It was decided that what we wanted to do was to have a opportunity for writers of any description to share their work, hopes and fears in an informal, comfortable atmosphere. We spoke to Mags Campbell who runs  Berry Tavern in town and asked her if her place could house some kind of an event with this description. Mags didn’t have a problem with that so we went about sources locals writers who fit certain criteria. We wanted published writers, unpublished writers, hobby writers, writers of all ages.  Stephen created a blog and set himself the task of creating videos and films on the topic. he did a bang up job of coming home with the good. Then we listened to what the people of Drumshanbo said when we spoke to them about our ideas. And we took their thoughts on board and went about for filling the wish list. One of the things that was mentioned was that we should get some writers that were born and raised in Drumshanbo and have gained literary success. Ita Daly was one name that kept coming up. So I contacted Ms Daly’s agent in London and asked that a letter be directed to her. Ita Daly responded so quickly and so enthusiastically , we nearly fell off our chair. It was especially touching for us that she should be so gracious because Ita’s husband, David Marcus, a well -known literary editor in Ireland who gave much of our established writers of today their first break by publishing their work in the Irish Independent in the ’70′s. Sadly Mr. Marcus passed away this year , so it was much to our amazement that Ita said she would be delighted to return to her home and give a reading. he also sought out Dermot Healy and ,as well as poet John F.Deane who has a family home in the area. Also we asked New York/Keshcarrigan writer Masha Mehran to read and we asked our own local writer Natalia Beylis. Natalia is a great asset to the county for a number of reason , one of which is that she and her husband Willie Stewart run the Stitchy Press Publishers and they sell the finest used books  at various farmer’s markets. Natalia also agreed to run a workshop on DIY publishing. A workshop that was filled to capacity and that we held in Paddy Mac’s old pub/chemist store.  I ran two workshops for children writers in the library which went done a treat, but we had to cancel the teenagers writing on the wall workshop because of weather.

( It really rained hard over that weekend. )

The first night was geared as an open mike. Not a lot of people showed up, which suited me fine because as the host of the event, that meant that I could read more of my stuff that planned. So it was fine. The second day, Saturday was the workshop day and they went over well and that evening we held a bit of a cabaret where we featured one of Stitchy Press’s  newest writers Boris Belony. Some of the member of  the Pig Executives travelled to the event to read and by and large the night went down well.  The next event was held on the Sunday night. First off we had a walking Tour of Drumshanbo with Eamon Daly and Noel McPartland. About 40 people turned out to walk through the town , sharing memories and stories and it was so well received we’ll be doing it again next year for sure. Then everyone marched into the Tavern where more people joined them and we had the published writer read with the afore mentioned published people .

Oh it was so good. everyone throughly enjoyed themselves. Myself and Annie Perry thought we’d make a few tasty sandwiches for the night and thinking that we’d have the some small crowd at the Sunday event, only made bites for thirty people. Ninety people were in Berry’s back room and well, I couldn’t very well hand out food to only a few, so I waited until the event finished and those who were still talking and sharing got themselves a nice little something to nibble on.

The final event was held on the Bank Holiday Monday and much to Stephen and mines surprise we had a terrific turn out for the Poetry and Prose Brunch, held in the front bar of Berry’s Tavern. Now the “Brunch” aspect of the event was a ploy to get people in- I used to run shows in Toronto where if you bought a ticket you’d get a beer and I thinking along the same line. but I didn’t think that..

A) people would actually come  out for the event in the first part- I mean, we held it at 2pm in the afternoon for goodness sake.. and

B) that someone would take us serious and be just a bit more than contrite when there was no food.

She fortunately settled on a glass of Guinness, which as everyone know, is a meal unto itself.

But imagine our surprise when 15 people arrived to read their work and more people arrived just to listen!!

At the end of the day, we created a well received weekend, marking the first of many Written Word Weekends to come.

Please click onto our blog to catch up with the goings on.

Written Word Weekend

Then what happened?

well word spread fast about our success and didn’t the program director of the Carrick-on-Shannon Arts Centre, The Dock give us a call asking us to produce an event for them. On Thursday October 1st, the country celebrates poetry with National Poetry Day ( Actually its not called National Poetry day, but something very close to that… I’ll have to look it up .. never mind)

Once again we got on the horn and set the task to create and interesting and inviting event. Once again, we contacted Dermot Healy and he agreed to conduct a poetry writing workshop form 3-6 on that day and then I rang around to some of the writers that graced our stages at the written word weekend. One of these such writers is a man named Michael Herron. He attended the Poetry and Prose Brunch. Now the funny thing about him is that he found the blog site of the Written Word Weekend all by himself and clicked onto our YouTube videos where Stephen employed the use of my songs as the sound track. Michael enjoyed the music and somehow ( still don’t know exactly how..) somehow, he got my phone number and gave me a call.

The day he called me I was working on the bog. I took a part time job over the summer picking up sods of peat  and stacking them onto 6 ft high banks. It was great, peaceful work. You’re all alone on the bog. Miles and miles of flat, lush, rich land. Soft on the feet and clear, clean air around you. I had my dog with me. She LOVED it. Anyway , there I was, up to my knees in thousand year old soil, heaving away at it when the phone rang and this ever so elegant English accent filtered through my ears. He said who he was  and that he looked at the videos and was impressed with the sounds and wanted to buy my CD.  I replied,

” You want to buy MY Cd?” Don’t know why I was shocked. In fairness its not a bad CD but I was.

Anyway the long and short of it was that Michael was earnest and I sent him the thing and he sent me the money. That was it. A few weeks later, I’m checking the local paper to see if our press release was printed and there above our piece was an article on the last “iYeats Poetry Winner” And who was it? One Michael Herron.

So having his email address, which we dutifully swapped, I invited Michael personally to read his work. And  he attended the weekend.  So when the Dock asked us to find more writers I thought of him, and joy, he agreed.

I’ve also invited one of the Pig Executives, our True Poet in the group- David Cameron. David is a poet down to his Scottish socks and darn it all,, he’s a beautiful poet at that.

Then fate did a star turn in our direction. Last week I got a call from Dermot Healy telling me that the just got off the phone with a produce from RTE who is going to do a documentary about him and a particular poem of his . Dermot said that the RTE crew was going to the Flatlake Festival to film his work ( more on that soon) and that  RTE also wanted to come to the Dock and film him while he taught the poetry workshop!

A few feather landed nicely in everybodies hats that day, I can tell you!

Thats David there at the Story-a-Thon at the Yeats Library during the Sligo Festival

this July.

Well thats good deal of info don’t you think?

How about some pictures?

Okay eileen

Some of the audience members at the Story-a-Thon

The writer/reader took the picture

(thats me)

Aoife Hillman’s poem at the writing workshop for children under 8

The writing is on the wall

and in this case, on the gable end of the library wall!

the French nurse

and now something completely different

THE IRISH TIMES !!!!!

We’re mentioned in the first paragraph of the Irish Times!!!

The Flatlake Literary and Arts Festival
Clones, Co Monaghan
The Flatlake Festival does its best to dodge stereotyping and prosaic attempts to lump it in with the ever-growing festival scene in Ireland. It is a madcap, wonderfully shambolic and creatively mixed affair. The event is more closely described as a large outdoor gathering of thoughts, torments and half-baked notions, many of them coming from the minds of the organisers. Cue Pat McCabe. Holed up for most of the weekend in a caravan under a sheet of canvas, the festival’s co-founder became “Captain Butty”, and hosted his own festival radio show at the Mondo Rancho Tent. The open back of a trailer allowed for impromptu performances of poetry, song and spoken word from many passers-by, including The Pig Executive from Leitrim, or the wonderfully entertaining Poetry Chicks, or whoever happened to have a few thoughts scribbled down.
McCabe also announced the day’s line-up every morning (all liable to run behind the scheduled time or change at a moment’s notice) and had special guests that ranged from Stephen Rea to his own relatives who would pop in for a chat. He played music ( Living Next Door to Alice , Spaghetti western soundtracks, and show band parodies) and divulged personal insights, such as: “Later on, of course, we have the big GAA debate, hosted by Tom McGuirk. I couldn’t kick snow off a rope myself, but there you go.”
As the rain introduced itself on Friday evening, Liz and the Relatives went down a stormer in the Butty Barn. Take the best of the McGarrigle Sisters and add a bunch of accomplished musicians and some finger-clicking blues, and, well, could there be a better setting than a straw-filled barn on a Friday night? At the open-air stage, Mik Artistik threw out boxes of straws (rhymes with “rounds of applause”, get it?), and sang about how Jimmy Savile had bought his album once and was going to fix it for him.
Some bands over the weekend had never actually played together before. The creative results were mixed, naturally, but even when it was really, really bad, it was good. Whether it was nervy singer songwriters struggling to play basic guitar chords, or technical glitches and unrehearsed additions to the programme, it didn’t matter really. The artistic participation in the festival was above all else, honest. And how many arts festival can you say that for anymore?
One of the largest gatherings of the weekend was on Saturday afternoon for a tribute to Harold Pinter, presented by Fintan McKeown and featuring Keith Allen and Dominic West from the US series, The Wire . All three read from articles, political statements, poems and excerpts from other works, with Allen a little too blokey for my liking and West emerging as a fine actor’s actor. Who would have known?
Actor Cillian Murphy had the front row swooning for his DJ set late on Saturday night. For the most part he stuck to foot-stomping faithfuls – Beck’s Loser , Nena’s 99 Red Balloons , Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams , and plenty of funk, some soul and a little early 1990s rock. If he ever gives up acting, there are plenty of student bars up and down the country who would be delighted to have him on a slow Tuesday.
Of the more interesting film offerings were highlights from the Clones Film Festival Scanbitz Challenge, where competitors had to shoot and edit a film in 48 hours. The Ferret was suitably bizarre and not a bad return for only two day’s work.
During the afternoons, sports such as “toss the sheaf” or “catch the pig” went on, with clowns or performers also roaming the fairly small geographical area of the festival site, in front of the big house, Hilton Park.
The estate’s owner, Johnny Madden, mingled with the crowds over the weekend, and must have been touched to receive a personal dedication from Jinx Lennon, when performing the song, Gobshite on the Hill . Lennon drew a large crowd, but didn’t quite follow through on the expectation. Jack Lukeman delivered with a Paul Robeson tribute, rehearsed, he said, that afternoon in a Clones hotel, or perhaps he says that to all the festival audiences. BRIAN O’CONNELL

The Pig Executives

From Lovely Leitrim

Writers with oink

Mucky Pig

Kamikaze Pig

The Anti Pig

Prima Banbh

Whee, Whee, Whee All the Way Home

Suckling Pig

Snowball

just to name a few

Under the snout of

writer/poet

Mr Dermot Healy

Right so..

I’m going to leave this here for a

few reasons. One being that I can’t

seem to get rid of this type face and

its way over the top,

the second reason is that I’ve just

had a call from my blessed Irish

mother living in Canada and we

spoke for the last hour and I’m

bagged.

So fare thee well my own true love.

Good night Sweet heart.

Thanks for clicking in.

And we’ll continue this merry tale

another day soon

All the very best to you wherever

and whoever you are.

always

eileen

At the funny farm

2007

photo by Jeri Reilly

(aka Pig Executive

…….Pearl)