‘And catch the heart off guard … and blow it open’ : at the Clifden Arts Week, September 17-27, 2009.

I live in Connemara now in a place called Recess where smart alecs recently added an ‘ion’ to the road sign turning it into Recession, fitting I suppose for the time that is in it – as they say in the Gaelic syntax; and now syntax becomes sin-tax in my head and I wander off somewhere, wondering if all our sins were taxed would the recession end overnight …


Sub-prime loans, Madoff, global warming, 9/11, Al-Qaeda, health-care, swine flu, the Real IRA, taxes, emigration, immigration, illegal aliens, the God delusion, pedophile priests, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, the West Bank, Israel, Gaza Strip, outstrip, Hamas, PLO, ETA, cars, pollution, General Motors, Anglo-Irish Bank, too big to fail, bankruptcy, suicides, jail, crisis, depression, recession, bears, bulls, bullies, bears, bares all, airport bombs, train bombs, nightclub bombs, suicide bombers, nuclear bombs, dirty bombs, dirty language, pornography, internet porn, inflation, deflation, derivatives, contracts for difference …


No, no, no, I’ve come to Arts Week in Clifden to dispel all that gloom; this annual week of magic and treasure, treasure free of global speculation, treasure that has only increased in value over time …


Seamus Heaney needed no introduction when he came to read at St. Joseph’s Church but Des Lally outdid himself; and the church was filled to the rafters with people of all ages, young and old, Irish people, Connemara people, people from other countries, academics, farmers, fishermen, bus drivers, teachers, builders, labourers, mothers, teenagers, students, poetry readers, people who never read poetry, people who had never seen a Nobel Prize winner before, fans, poetry slammers, groupies there to see ‘famous Seamus’ …and then he started to read: old poems, new poems, famous poems, heart-rending poems: ‘a four foot box, a foot for every year’ , heart-opening poems: ‘and catch the heart off guard and blow it open’ …

In the Station House Theatre, as I waited for Paul Muldoon, the man sitting beside me said, in awe, “you know he’s the poetry editor of The New Yorker now” and, no, I didn’t know that, I only knew that he lectured at Princeton and that he’d won the Pulitzer Prize for Moy Sand and Gravel (a sand pit has never looked the same to me since then) and I remembered that he’d signed his poems to me all those years ago in London after his reading at the Royal Court Theatre where we’d sat beside Brian Cox (who has since fled to Hollywood) … but I digress, Paul will make you do that, read him and you’ll see what I mean … and suddenly he was there, same face, same hair, a little greyer now, same Ulster voice tinged now with a bit of America … and the time flew by just listening to him until he asked us if we had twenty-five (or was it thirty-five) minutes to give him so that he could read Incantata … who would say no ... and we listened, spellbound, to Paul read the work that he wrote to the memory of his former lover, Mary Powers, who died from cancer… Incantata is a long magical elegy of forty-five eight line stanzas that opens with these lines: I thought of you tonight, a leanbh, lying there in your long barrow colder and dumber than a fish by Francisco de Herrera …

And everywhere: Tony Curtis, poet-in-residence, with his charisma, his captivating poetry, the twinkle in his eyes, welcomed to a reading in the Clifden Library by Paul and Bernie, librarians and custodians of our treasures; reading to a star-struck audience, all listening, listening, knowing that his poems would never sound the same when they read them, wondering if he was born a poet and, knowing, at the end, that he truly was … to be followed, matched, book-ended by Michael Coady, poet-in-residence before Tony, who took us through his hypnotizing recent work, set mostly in Paris ...


People squeezed into the Church of Ireland’s pews as they listened to Cantairi Chonamara commence the evening with Vivaldi’s Gloria – an opening to pepare the audience for Anuna. If music ‘soothes the savage breast’ then Anuna must deserve the award for the most soothing of them all, the men holding us from the moment they moved up the aisle, stopping midway and singing to us, transfixing us, letting us breathe again as they reached the altar, only to immediately submerge us in the dramatic entrance of the Anuna ladies, gowned in medieval attire, beautiful in face and voice, each holding a candle as they moved up the aisles, centre and side, covering us with their presence, their poise, their perfection, their voices, soothing, soothing, soothing …


At the Atlantic Hotel I fell headlong into the visual arts; the work of the artist Alannah Robins. Her work insisted that I explore the walls of the hotel, its exposition space, until I arrived back again at her triptych which dominated the exhibition: the shipwrecked boat, haunting and proud, breaking up now on the Inis Oirr island rocks, captured in three parts; easily a masterpiece commanding all of us to pay homage to those who ‘go down to the sea in ships’ and to Alannah Robins, the artist, a lady of many talents who had enthralled us earlier as mezzo-soprano in her classical music recital in the Church of Ireland, accompanied by Sister Karol O’Connell on the piano, as they presented pieces by Schubert, Mozart, Field and Poulenc…


And what can one say of Eamon Grennan, poet, lecturer at Vassar, NYU, Columbia; a man whose home is here and there: New York for half the year, Connemara for the other half. Former US poet laureate Billy Collins said: ‘Few poets are as generous as Eamon in the sheer volume of delight his poems convey.’ Eamon held us in the Clifden Library with his readings; now he holds us at home as we savour his book, Out of Breath, saying to ourselves ‘why haven’t we read him before, he’s so good …’ and earlier he had surpassed himself in a dramatic recital for two voices, which he had adapted from J.M.Synge’s The Aran Islands. Acted and delivered by Rosalind and Sean Coyne, it was an enthralling performance bringing Synge and the people of the Aran Islands to life in front of us; a performance that, had it been given on Broadway, would surely have captured a Tony Award …


How do I cover poet Michael Longley, appointed Professor of Poetry for Ireland in 2007, and guitarist Redmond O’Toole, selected as the National Concert Hall’s ‘rising star’ for 2009. An event of poetry and music, extraordinary. Michael’s poem, Ceasefire, hangs on the wall in my house and I was stunned by Redmond at last year’s Arts Festival in the more intimate space of the Clifden Library. Redmond has emerged as one of the most innovative and exciting young guitarists in Europe; the first to adapt to Paul Galbraith's new groundbreaking technique and instrument; he plays an 8-string 'Brahms guitar' in the cello position connected to a special resonating box. The additional range of the guitar allows an expansion of the repertoire as well as incorporating original music for classical guitar. This time Michael and Redmond are in a much grander setting, the stage at the Station House Theatre. But they still made us feel intimate, made us feel that they were right there in our living room. Alternating Michael’s poems with Redmond’s music catered to our emotional centre, at once opening us to a unique poetic vision complemented by innovative and exciting music. Michael celebrated his 70th year and Brendan Flynn (founder of the Clifden Arts Week) congratulated him as artist Rosie McGurran presented him with a portrait…


And the Clifden Arts Week would not be complete without one or more classical concerts, many of them held in the intimate space of the Church of Ireland. And so it was there that I went to listen to … and watch … Finghin Collins, one of Ireland’s most superb pianists, a student of the Geneva Conservatoire and sought after internationally …and cellist, conductor and composer Christian Benda, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Prague Sinfonia (and a descendant of the Czech Benda composers dynasty of the 18th century) … yes, listen and watch them (because it was as much a visual experience as an aural) play Schumann, Shostakovich, and Brahms …



Speaking of a visual experience, we had a real treat: the first screening in Ireland of Art O’Briain’s new documentary film, A Subtle Movement of Air, presented by Art himself. The film is a moving portrait of Evald Grog, a Dane who has suffered from Muscular Dystrophy all his life, a disease he has not allowed to prevent him from overcoming the challenges and impediments caused by his condition. It follows him in his personal journey from the simple act of getting bathed to the massive achievement of his pioneering work in establishing support centres in Denmark for people like himself … and now farther afield in Iceland where he has gone to consult, show, exhort all who encounter him, from ordinary Icelanders to government ministers … to get them to follow the example of Denmark. Truly a tribute to Evald Grog – and to the skill and dedication of Art O’Briain in bringing Evald to us. This is a film deserving world-wide distribution. It is inspiring and uplifting.



Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize, green shoots are spotted in the economy, the stock markets may have hit a bottom, the Americans and the Iranians are talking, the US will not build missile bases on Russia’s border, Guantanamo will be closed, Obama bans torture, more green shoots are seen, Madoff goes to prison, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, the Celtic Tiger is dead, long live the Celtic Tiger, windmills, solar panels, green energy, recycling, bank regulation, slow recovery seen on the horizon, depression avoided …



It seems that the gloom in the world is lifting and some sunshine is peeking through the clouds … could any of that be attributed to the Clifden Arts Week … no, no, no, highly improbable ... and yet …

Article kindly reproduced courtesy of Pat Mullan, find him here patmullan.com