Sunday, March 6, 2011

Program of the World Book Day

Now the real World Book day:

At 12.00pm in theory we had an Inkslingers creative writing session led by Andrew McEneff. This was supposed to be a structured hour where participants were given a series of writing prompts and critique. In practice it wasn't much structured and we only did three prompt lines since MrEneff forgot to check the time and was as busy to write the next prompt line as his students which gave little time for any of us to share or listen each other's works. However even though he has completed a M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity Collegeall he is  only a volunteer  at the center so I guess I couldn't blame him.  
We then quickly ran down the stairs to enjoy the rest of the program.
1pm Lunchtime Poetry Readings with acclaimed poets Peter Sirr, Jean O' Brien, Gerald Dawe, Richard Halperin, Aifric Mac Aodha and Paul Perry.
We did hear four of five poems of each of the mentioned poets. Peter Sirr  shared with us  an interesting poem inspired from a victorian black and white picture he showed us on his Ipad. Jean O'Brien read to us her poem of the Merman which won the Arvon International Poetry Award. Richard Halperin recited "In the Memory of James Joyce", Aifric her grief on loosing her parents and Paul Perry  a very unusual, quirky poem on the frustration of translating from English to Ukrainian but the ones that stayed with me the most were from Gerarld Dawe whose theme as he said himself was about "fucking grief". His poems had a particular type of honesty that forced people to face their emotions as well as his.
At 3pm Film screening of James Joyce's The Dead followed but I didn't follow that! I would understand why it would be interesting to see how the Irish middle class lived in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century but I failed to concentrate on anything on that movie that day.
However I did thoroughly enjoy the last part of the program at 7pm with the dramatic performance by Peter Duffy of The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh. Despite a terrible headache, Mr Duffy kept through his work-in-progress performance with a dedication and calm that awed his audience. His dramatisation of Monaghan farmer's life (with the help of sounds effects) was so accurate and efficient than we were right with him in the middle of Mr Maguire's field. A very memorable play.

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