simply life and death

I am back from Malaga, Nerja, Granada, Sierra Nevada and Alicante. I made a discovery while driving across the country. In My Fair Lady, the song ‘the rain in spain stays mainly on the ‘plane’ does not refer to an aircraft. It seems Spain is formed of mountains, sea and plains and the rain stays in the plain. This makes a lot more sense. Even as a child, I could never understand how it stayed on the plane.

Not that I had any rain last week, in the mountains or in the plains. But on the way there, there was tummy turning turbulence on my plane. A child cried out ‘Mummy, make it stop. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.’ Imagine having the desire, fear, freedom and faith to call that out. Anyway, mummy did what was necessary and we all lived.

Conversely, a day after I was home, I discovered that a colleague poet of mine from Galway whom I liked and very much respected died of a sudden heart attack while swimming in the sea in Spain. I was shocked. The day before I had been swimming in the sea near Alicante, and was overwhelmed with the glory and sensuousness of the salt, water, waves. I wrote a draft ditty later that evening. It has no title.

Waves of water, surf, sand

submerge emerge converge

Salt pricks my pores

stains my lips

sea rushes my depths

straddles my hair

lays me out

I am grains of sand

beached.

I danced to the beat of my heart.

It is not worked on. They are words only. I wish they were better. But they belong to Kevin O’Shea. May he rest in peace.

“Recognise the World in a Different Way”

‘Where the Wind Sleeps’, Noel Monahan’s latest volume of poetry, was launched last night in Cavan. People flowed up the Court House steps and into the council chamber. People rushed for seats but some had to make do with sitting on the sideboards, standing at the back, or squatting in the aisles. What an accolade to a local poet and to the Arts in Cavan. Lovely poems too! I haven’t read them all yet, but what I liked, as I browsed, is seeing Cavan and its people peering out at me from its pages. I have lived in the County fifteen years and have travelled across it widely, so am well versed in its natural beauty and geography. I respond to the references to the town lands, I know the people, the mountains, the music. In Galway last year, Doire Press published short stories set in the city. I loved it. It is fun to read about characters roaming the familiar streets. Noel has done a similar thing through this volume of poetry.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world,” Philip Pullman.

Isn’t that right? Our lives become a series of stories and or poems. Stories weave our history and our shared imagination precedes our future. Words describe us, form our thinking, shape our ability to respond to each other. I wonder if our ham fisted use of it, our often lazy construction of sentences, the screaming hysteria of headlines and media leads the way to chaos and breakdown. Maybe. That is why we must delve, search, seek and use our language effectively.

Words are so important. I was on a ‘facilitative leadership’ course this week. I have facilitated and led groups for a long time. This course was very interesting. By naming the different segments of the facilitation process, and thereby specifically defining the work, I was able to appreciate and understand the job I have been doing, almost blindly, for 30 years. It gave the work and myself a value. However, you can go over the top too. Instead of being given an assignment, or homework, between sessions, I was given an ‘evening opportunity’!

Gerard Smyth, from Poetry Ireland, did a wonderful introduction to Noel Monahan’s volume, ‘Where the Wind Sleeps’. I wish I had his command of the English language. Poetry, he said, makes us recognise the world in a different way. That is a wonderful description of poetry. To enjoy a poem we have to see its kindred spirit, it may not reflect our own experience, but it must make us recognise the world.

The poets and writers who read their work this week at the first session of AT The Edge, Cavan made us recognise the world in a different way. Shane Connaughton read an excerpt from his current work in play, as did June Caldwell. Both reflected the edgy experience, pathos and humour of emigration. Michael Farry brought us firmly home to Ireland again with his poems, also full of quiet humour, and sharp with experience. In his poems I recognised the older man in the chemist, the shed in the garden, the glory of being the new grandparent (even though I’m not there yet). Over thirty five people came to the Library for the first session of AT the Edge, Cavan. I was so happy!

It is great to recognise the world in a different way. Thank you, every one, for doing that for me this week.

Photos are of a few Cana House poets reading at the open mic, AT the Edge, Cavan. Also, Cana House Poets 11 have published a booklet of their poetry called YEAST. Poems by Pat Joe Kennedy, Ann O’Donoghue, Marion Lyon, Patricia Doole, Dermot Maguire, Ann Conway, Kate Ennals

Going Off ….

I have just had a wonderful week and I am excited about the month ahead. I am back in my bed after a week in Galway with my lovely friend who is now swanning about with other friends in Tipp. It is a Sunday morning of a bank holiday weekend and I feel the day stretches ahead in that luxurious, Judy Garland sort of way. Outside, I hear birdsong. I think the chirrup of the Robin is the lead, but the trills of the Finches and notes of the Blackbird are clear in the chorus. The sky is glowing pink in the East. I feel content and there is the crux of the matter. If I am happy, I tend to be ‘off doing’, not writing. A conundrum: I love to write and I love to be ‘off doing’ and the two do not entwine well.

Every morning last week, I would wake to the trills of friend, alongside the cries of the gulls, and immediately I would join in. There is nothing better first thing, after opening your eyes, than continuing the conversation of the night before, unless it is starting a new one. So, I might say, ‘Good morning, friend, what did you think of the President’s visit to England?’ And friend will regale me with views and opinions and soon we will be laughing our way into the day. It was absolute pleasure. But it meant I didn’t write. I talked and laughed instead. We also shopped, walked, ate cakes, and climbed Diamond Hill in Letterfrack on the most amazing morning, the sort of morning that only exists on Diamond Hill in Letterfrack, Connemara.

This coming week is very exciting too. There is the first night of my AT The Edge, Cavan (thanks to the wee bit of support from the Cavan Arts Office) which I am very excited and nervous about. I am doing a three day training course in facilitative leadership and I am going to a formal party where I have to dress up and look my best. This means I have to buy new sandals because Poppins, our new puppy, chewed up my pair from last year . This means a shopping expedition, where ‘I absolutely have to‘ buy shoes. I will feel I am a proper woman. And then, after that, I am going to Spain with friend: Malaga, Granada, Sierra Nevada, Alicante. There is no time to write. I am excited and this makes me very sad for, as every writer knows, the only true driving force for creative brilliance is misery, mayhem, and melancholia.

Ah well, I’ll try… but now I simply have to get up and go off and do…later, my friends, later.

AT the Edge, Cavan. Literary Night followed by Open Mic. Tues 6 May. 6.30pm. Johnston Library.

A Thought on Existentialism, Sort Of…

From time to time, over the past few months, I have been musing on existentialism. In the mornings, I wake up, lie on my back and think. My thoughts flit around alighting on various topics…the birds singing in the garden, the curtain rails, my mother in London, the dim sum that my brother eats, peas I am growing, my dream that I vaguely recall. Slowly, the thoughts kaleidoscope into a pattern that usually revolves around where I am that morning, why and what I’m going to do that day. It is generally laced with good intentions and usually influenced by the books I have recently read.

Earlier this year I read Camus’ The Outsider. I had in fact intended to download essays by Jean Paul Sartre but made a mistake (that in itself is surely reflective of something pre-determined).In The Outsider, I was struck by Camus’ central character, Meursault; his relationship to the world, his mother and the impact of the Sun on the action of the novel. Meursault seemed indifferent to his life yet this was juxtaposed with his honesty and integrity. He took responsibility for his actions but the heat and whiteness of the days took their toll on the characters in the book.

This morning I was thinking again about the meaning of existentialism after finishing ‘Kindness of Solitude’ by Yiyun Li (A Chinese woman now living in America). I had downloaded it after listening to a review on Today FM. The reviewer recommended it as a thriller with a philosophical bent.

For me, it is not a thriller (interesting juxtaposition there) but there is a philosophical bent that picks up the theme of the French existentialists. The story is weaved around the lives of three Chinese children, one of whom poisons an older girl excluded by the Communist State for activities in Tiananmen Square.

The book examines the consequent lives of the three children, (two of whom go to live in the US). It looks at each of characters and how their adult selves respond to events that took place in their lives as children and explores how each one intentionally shapes their circumstances as a result and accepts the outcomes with equanimity. This is the existentialist theme: that each of us is responsible for our own actions. But there is also a nihilistic feel to it because there is an inexorable destiny to which our actions will lead. There is an underlying, passive inevitability about each individual. In Kindness of Solitude I found the inevitability of characters’ destiny tedious. Each of the central characters is unfulfilled. It undermines active responsibility and denies the possibility of change. Nearly every sentence from Ruyu, one of the three central characters, ends in a question mark which oddly left her over bearing and unengaged. The other two seemed like creatures caught in a hamster wheel. Do hamsters take responsibility? I half enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the thinking behind it.

Yes, it was nice to be thinking. Last night, surrounded by fragments of chocolate eggs, I caught up with the first episode in the last series of Mad Men. Existentialism doesn’t feature much here. Don Draper’s past story may pay homage to it, but the glamour, glitz, commercialism…the rampant march of modernity lays waste to any individuality in current day society and even the ability of the individual to take responsibility for their own actions… let alone act.

So, now this morning, having ploughed this particular thought furrow for long enough, I will leap out of bed, embrace the sun, and glory in the day. I am off for a swim and to play with Poppins, our puppy, named after my heroine, Mary. I wonder what her view of the existentialists was…maybe something to do with supercalerfragilisticexpealidocious… I am in control!

Hope you all enjoyed the rejuvenation of Easter!

At the Edge…of Things

I was really excited to watch the Westport Drama Group, Fabulous Brown Feathers (love the name) perform ‘My Rings for a Cushion’, my 15 minute play, in the Claremorris Fringe Festival last night. The play has a cast of two and David Foley (“Robbie”) and Margaret Joyce (Maura) portrayed the characters superbly. The play is about an old lady who has a hip problem, falls and can’t move. “Robbie”, a young burglar enters the house, and the play reflects how the two deal with the situation. Both actors captured perfectly the difficult but charming relationship that develops. It was directed by Liz Browne who did a fabulous job. I often think my wacky sense of humour is lost on people so I was delighted with the laughs that the performance received.

I would also like to thank in particular, John Corless, who organises the Claremorris Fringe Festival. The Fringe festival provides new writers with the opportunity to submit short plays. He also organised tea and sandwiches afterwards so we could all meet. Without John’s advice and enthusiasm, my play would never have been performed. So thank you to all in Claremorris and Mayo!

We also went to see The Weir by Conor McPherson performed by the Kilmuckridge Drama Group. That too was a really great performance.

So, now I’m back in Cavan baking for my poetry workshop tonight (banana and prune loaf ). Tonight we workshop our music poems and next week the assignment is In Praise. Maybe I will do a poem in praise of the wonderful amateur dramatists across the country who create such excellent entertainment with such commitment and energy.

And, of course, I must mention my new pet project, At the Edge, Cavan. We start the new Cavan Literary Evening on Tuesday 6 May in the Johnston Library in Cavan Town at 6.30pm. We have a great line up for the first event. Cavan man, Shane Connaughton (play/film writer) launches the project, followed by June Caldwell, a fab story teller from Dublin and then Michael Farry, from Meath, who writes lovely poems. I am really looking forward to the Open Mic afterwards. We have such writing talent in Cavan. I hope everyone has the courage to register to read.

Well, the loaf is out of the oven and Poppins, my new puppy, is looking at me with doleful eyes. I think it might be time for a walk.

If Every You Go…Sensing Space

I have a two hour wait at Dublin airport when I travel to London due to bus connections from Cavan. Last week I whiled away the time very happily reading If You Ever Go, edited by Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth. It is a wonderful anthology of poems about Dublin by a range of poets over hundreds of years. I love reading poetry about places I know. If the poem works, I immediately feel as if I am peeking out from between its lines. It gives me a strong sense of belonging. I’m looking forward to the journey home, so I can once again have hours to immerse myself in Dublin while in no-man’s land.

I emerged out of Stockwell tube last Friday into the London streets and deeply inhaled a chest full of warm petrol and diesel fumes and apparently a desert full of Saharan sand. Home! It was heavier and more of it than usual. It seems there is a health warning. London! As I write I can hear a melee of birds combined with over head jets and sirens on the Clapham Road. But despite the air, London in spring time is a wonderful place to be. The pink blossom trees and white thorn quiver gently in the warm fumes. The magnolia in the garden is magnificent. It is just on the turn; blousy white flowers hang voluptuously. There is a sense of faded decadence.

Voluptuous and decadence were not words that came to mind at the ‘Sensing Spaces – Architecture Re-imagined’ exhibition at the Royal Academy gallery in Piccadilly. There were some interesting installations but Ruthie, my companion, and I had been walking in Green Park, around Constitution Hill and The Mall, enjoying the beautifully grand architecture of Clarence House and Whitehall. The installations paled into insignificance in comparison. However, it was fun to climb and explore them. I didn’t think they were well curated. I did like the straw house and the Chinese installation: wood, light and gravel being the central components.

Having said that, I’m glad to be coming home to Cavan where wood, gravel and light lie in abundance.

Edging Into Play!

Despite my years of experience, I still have tremors of uncertainty when it comes to art appreciation. If I feel unsure about an aspect of a play or a painting, I usually think it is surely because I have failed to comprehend its depths, and it would be best if I kept quiet and didn’t show my ignorance. That’s why I really enjoyed Tommy McArdle’s adjudication of the Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry performed at the Cavan Drama Festival – he put into words everything I thought. It is such a pleasure having your thoughts vindicated by a professional!

I really enjoyed the play, though I felt some of the soliloquies were over long and lapsed into ‘story telling’, as Tommy McArdle described it, as opposed to dialogue. Sebastian Barry wrote it as a novel. It is beautifully written. The language is very lyrical and expressive. It is a challenge to convert into a play. I thought the Moate Club of Naas, Kildare were extremely courageous to do it, particularly Padraig Broe who played the leading character, Thomas Dunne.

The play is about an old Superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police who has been put in to the county home in Baltinglass by his daughter due to his anguished ravings stemming from his job as a Catholic superintendent during the Lock Out in 1913, the grief imposed by the loss of his wife in childbirth and the death of his young son in the First World War. The play explores that off side place between lucidity and madness that history, memory and emotion can take us to. The other characters in the play, the Home Supervisor who was the jaunty torturer of the old man (Eugene Delaney), and the seamstress, Mrs O’Dea (Ann Hurley) as well as the three daughters all kept the revolving nature of the play between past and present, lucidity and madness, focused and sharp. It was excellent. I am so glad there was a good a turn out. It is amazing how much work and commitment goes into these productions and the Cavan Drama Festival has to be praised and thanked for the excellent entertainment. I am only sorry I got all my dates wrong. I thought the Festival only started last night!!

This confusion is partly due to overloading of a poor writer’s brain this week. I am sure that this ‘overloading’ didn’t used to happen when I was an overworked community development practitioner. Maybe this is because it was all shaped into one pattern of ‘work’, where as now my activities are more random. This week I have been moving my daughter in Dublin, facilitating my poetry workshop in Cavan, tendering and interviewing for a contract in Bailieborough, settling in a new young (mad) puppy at home, reading in Trim at the launch of Boyne Berries, trying to maintain my writing, and keep in touch with International Women’s Breakfasts being organised across the county by Breffini Belles of which I am a member.

AT The Edge Cavan

But, the reason I am saying all this is to get to the most exciting part: I have been funded a wee sum of money by Cavan Arts Office to try to establish a bi-monthly literary event in the Johnston Library, Cavan between now and Christmas 2014 where local people and aspiring local writers can have the opportunity to hear published authors and/or poets.

In Cavan, we have numerous writers and poets, writers groups, and local workshops, but there is no outlet for aspiring writers to read their material so following each of the readings will be an open mic session for local writers to perform their own work. The aim is to create a regular, popular, literary space in Cavan which is accessible and entertaining. I am calling it ‘At The Edge, Cavan’ and I am working closely with ‘Over The Edge’ in Galway from whom I stole the idea (with their permission). The first ‘reading and open mic’ will take place on Tuesday 6 May between 6.30pm and 8pm and thereafter the first Tuesday in July, September, November and December. So keep those dates free. I am organising the readers at the moment. If you are interested or want more information contact me. I will blog further when I have more details.

Oh, I was delighted to be shortlisted in the Doolin Short Story competition last week too. Congratulations to the winners and to the festival organisers. The weekend sounded brilliant.

Back Home from Home

So I am just over a week back from my writing travels in England. I have the beginnings of a short story to show for it, some wonderful recipes and new FB friends (also some delicious amaretto drinking chocolate). It doesn’t seem too much took place while I was away. The politicians are still arguing over the police commissioner and who should say or do what when.

However, in my absence I received good news from the Cavan Arts Office. We have been given some funding towards a new venture: At The Edge in Cavan…a bi-monthly reading evening in the Johnston library followed by an Open Mic session (it starts on Tuesday 6 May). I am currently sending off requests to all sorts of authors and poets to take the opportunity to come read to us. And I hope the Open Mic session will encourage our many local aspiring writers and poets to read their own material. We are working in association with the Galway Over The Edge team, Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar du Mars, so we can network and share ideas! So watch this space!

Also, while away, I discovered that my 15 minute play, My Rings for a Cushion, which was shortlisted in the Claremorris Theatre Fringe Festival is being performed on Wednesday 9 April, in case anyone wants to hike to Mayo for the production. I am of course, thanks to my lovely workshop of poets who once again have agreed to move the workshop to accommodate me. I can’t wait.

I am really enjoying the Cana Poetry workshops that I am facilitating. People write such amazing material: the ideas, the themes, the concoction of words is always so thrilling. I really hope my workshop participants, past and present, avail of the At The Edge, Cavan Open Mic evening to come and read their poems and prose. Reading the work in public is half the battle for many.

You may be wondering about the photo. My other welcome back event of the week was a colonoscopy. I leave you with poem detailing the experience…for your delectation!

Distorted Gut

I am in the end bed, by the window,

next to the nurses’ station.

Bright sun light pours in

I sit on the iron cot, waiting.

The nurses wear green scrubs, black trousers

What happened to white striped dresses with black stockings?

I wonder.

Nurse comes and pulls the curtain

sizzling and crackling along its rail

hooks missing, like gaps in teeth.

She grips a clamp on my little finger,

wraps a strap around my arm,

pumps it up. I think I might explode.

On the contrary, my blood pressure is low.

97 over 26

I am sick. Deliberately so. In preparation.

Nurse tells me to strip from the waist down,

hands me a pair of green paper shorts,

‘Put these on. Hole goes at the back’

I imagine my white arse exposed.

I blink slowly to change my train of thought.

Nurse returns to tap my vein

insert a line, wire me up

‘to keep a check on your heart’

I lay back, like a film star and smile.

Bed knobs and broom sticks come to mind

as they wheel me off, flying

through medical wards, long corridors

to surgical One, dark, filled with lit machines.

They park me in the middle bay,

which whirrs and burrs.

He stands waiting. A tubby Asian man,

thick black specs. He looks like a stock broker

from London suburbia.

‘Turn on your side, raise your knees high’

I close my eyes.

Nurse plugs me in to the monitor

so he can see.

Picadilly Circus on a crowded Saturday night

is how it feels:

knocking and banging

pushing and shoving

beeping and bleeping

That last is me.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ he asked.

‘Go on,’ I bravely whisper.

Once again, I feel pressure

Banging, clanging,

up, down, pushed around,

skirting, hurting

That last is me

STOP

He pulled it out, disappointed.

Later, I look at my notes

to see what he wrote

‘incomplete …a distorted gut.’

War!

I have visited the Imperial War Museum in London two or three times. It is one of my favourite. The Imperial War Museum in the North is equally good. It is a brilliant display of weapons, bombs, the crafts of war (photo is an aircraft bomber) and the lives of people living at war. It is welcoming, interactive and the staff brilliantly helpful.

We arrived just in time to see an excellent video which is displayed across all the walls, on every surface. The whole museum sinks into darkness. You find a bench and surrender yourself to a fascinating depiction, sound and fury of war – people describe their experiences in the field, in the city, in the factories. You submit yourself to battlefield of cries, explosions, alarms, hisses. All abilities are met. Everything is signed, written, and spoken. I learned about mortar bombs, hand grenades, chemical bombs, big guns, the tanks, minefields, submarines and torpedoes, automatic weapons, bombers, nuclear weapons, missiles, biological warfare…and that was just the beginning. Every story was told by an individual, describing his or her experience.

When the lights go up, you explore the exhibits. The museum is cleverly organised with nooks and crannies full of surprises, but the route is clearly marked. There are tanks, air craft, bombs, guns, cars. There are letters, books, poems, dresses, tools, binoculars, codes. There are posters. There are photos. There are speeches.

It is not just about the two world wars but the various wars between 1914 and 1994: The Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Six Day War, the War in Northern Ireland, the Iraq War…to name a few.

There is a second video. This is about peace. Peace in some of the countries affected by conflict: Iraq, El Salvador Northern Ireland, Kosovo. People from these places describe their experience of peace…how it is not easily come by, just because the weapons stop. They describe how peace is not easily built unless there is reconciliation and economic and social engagement…how conflict will remain brimming under the surface in silence.

There is more, much more. But our two hours was not enough. To mark International Women’s Day, the museum ran a special tour on the role of women in the war. I caught up with it after a while…just in time to hear the guide talk the role of woman protesting about the Cruise Missiles at Greenham Common.

“I was there,” I said. They all looked at me in surprise.

It seems I’m history!

The Poem is by Wilfred Owen