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West Cork Literary Festival programme sets pulses racing!...
Taking the pulse of the West Cork Literary Festival isn't easy, but the best-selling author, Damien Lewis, said something on Wednesday that put things into perspective.
Well actually the festival director, Clem Cairns, put it in context when he was introducing Damien as an award-winning documentary maker, war correspondent, and co-author of Slave — a non-fiction work about the abduction of Mende Nazer by the Mujahidin at the age of twelve.
After the talk, Damien explained to The Southern Star what exactly he was doing in Foilnamuck, Ballydehob. He said he had been living in Ireland for five years, but he'd only lived in West Cork for the last four.
"I was living in Dublin, but that was like living in London, so there was no point in being there. One day, I got in a car and drove around the circumference of Ireland and decided that West Cork was the nicest place on several levels.
"One, I found that if you make this place your home, people will welcome you in. Two, I love the fact that the community is still a community - it feels like Dorset did twenty, or thirty, years ago.
"Three, I also like the fact that it is very cosmopolitan. There's a large spectrum of people to meet and talk to. Four, it is an amazing place to write. Five, the other wonderful thing about it is that it is a filter."
A filter? "Yes, you get people in the industry who call and ask to meet you about maybe turning your latest book into a movie, but when you tell them that they have to travel to Cork and then drive for an hour or so, it filters out the people who are not that serious."
People like Damien - and all the other variables, combinations and computations - make the West Cork Literary Festival the real deal. They are evident in all aspects of the programme from the festival launch, which Baltimore-based Eoghan Harris was supposed to perform, to the honeyed performance of Dog Tail Soup, which revolves around Fergus O'Farrell of Schull, on the closing night of the festival.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Clem said he was sorry that Senator Eoghan Harris, who has been "a great friend and supporter of the festival for many years," was not able to launch the festival, and John Minihan's exhibition of photographs featuring writers, poets and performers that have attended the festival over the last ten years. John, who is famous for his photographs of Samuel Beckett, is based in Ballydehob.
The West Cork Literary Festival is a seven-day event that is, by and large, centred in the public library; and while that might not seem like a remarkable thing in itself, Clem said, "It brings with it some special and interesting elements.
"It surrounds us with books and with people who read books, so we are in the right place... with the right atmosphere from the start. Every event in the library is free - and with two out of the three main daily events taking place in the building - it makes the festival stand out among all others for its sheer accessibility to the public."
Having said that, the festival has always been driven by a very strong workshop programme that covers not only the familiar genres such as poetry, the novel, or the short story, but also areas such as travel writing, screenwriting, song writing, historical fiction, women's fiction, sports writing, speech writing, children's writing and thriller writing.
But it is the calibre of the people who conduct these workshops that is amazing. That, and how accessible they are when they take their turn centre stage at the library readings.
Some of them — like the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jeffrey Caine, who lives in Glengarriff — started out by giving a short, but brilliant, and oh-so-generous afternoon seminar during the festival, which ended up with people clamouring for a full-on, five-day workshop the following year.
A lot of writers who love the festival - like Sean Lusk who conducted the short story workshop this year - return year after year and lend tremendous support to the festival directors, Clem Cairns and Lorraine Bacchus, and their fantastic team of volunteers.
Sean Lusk's ability to entertain, Ian Wild's appeal and Kevin Barry's riveting performance of the short story are unadulterated crowd pleasers. Joseph O'Connor, whose novel 'Star of the Sea' has made him a household name in America, drew a huge crowd, as did Colin Dexter, the creator of the famous Inspector Morse.
Mr. Dexter might be diminutive in stature but what a stage presence! Everyone sat in rapt attention as he told one highly amusing, but self-deprecating, story after another.
Who would have thought a seminar entitled "The Influence of Spirituality In Creativity " would draw such a crowd? Or that people would be talking about it for days afterwards and parsing the words of John Waters, The Irish Times columnist and author of Lapsed Agnostic, and Michael McCarthy, the West Cork poet and priest who conducted the Spirituality and Creativity Workshop at the festival.
Some people travelled to the festival especially to hear Paul Durcan - one of Ireland's premier poets - give a warm and humorous performance, but there was an air of veneration when Dervla Murphy took to the stage at the Maritime Hotel on Friday night.
From her first book chronicling her solo cycle to India in 1963 to her latest book about Cuba, she has always given a searingly honest account of her travels and this has earned her a devoted following.
During her on-stage interview with Sean Lusk, she explained why her autobiography was so candid. She spoke about how sad she feels at the erosion of the Tibetan culture. And she described her time in the North of Ireland. She said a travel writer's job is to record things as they were.
The one thing that seemed to resonate most with a lot of people was her comment about people losing a sense of being human — no longer part of the whole. She said people don't want to use their bodies. She said they would, for example, prefer to drive instead of walk.
By losing our willingness to use our bodies, she said we are losing feeling for other living creatures and she warned: "Once we feel we are superior that is when we are in deep trouble. We are," she added, "wasting our intellect in the way we are abusing the world."
After more than four hundred people gave her a standing ovation, there was an undignified scramble for her books, a huge queue for the signing and an overall feeling of having attended a truly memorable event.
There's not enough space to mention everyone, but it must have been a proud moment for local woman and festival volunteer, Phyl McCarthy, to see her daughter, Kate O'Riordan, get such a warm reception at her reading alongside Deirdre Purcell - another local woman surely given that she has a home in Kilcatherine, Castletownbere.
David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and two-time nominee for the Man Booker prize, is also happy to leave his adopted home in Clonakilty to give an entertaining reading or two.
Alannah Hopkin whose latest book Eating Scenery really does explore the diverse community in West Cork stood up with short story award winner, Chuck Kruger from Cape Clear for a reading at the Festival Club at Organico.
Another award winner and novelist, Joyce Russell of Bantry, got a real home crowd response when she read at Margaret O'Neill and Joan O'Shea's bookshop in Bantry.
Some people shook Hazel Vickery's hand - others hugged her - after she gave a perambulatory Heritage Tour of Bantry. It was hugely informative and it made local people feel like they were on holidays.
Another 'local', the BBC comedian and presenter Graham Norton, turned up to hear Arthur Mathews of Fr. Ted fame give a talk at St. Brendan's Church. It began with a private joke as Mathews tapped Norton on the shoulder and said: "Thank you for coming to my wedding."
Finally, the extraordinary Swedish soprano, Camilla Griehsel, who lives in Schull, joined Colin Vearncombe, otherwise known as Black, for the concert finale on Saturday night. When he sang: "It's a wonderful, wonderful life" you just had to believe him, especially if you live in West Cork.
The Southern Star is a weekly newspaper covering the areas of South, East, Mid and West Cork.
Established in 1889, it is the largest selling newspaper in the county with a readership of over 50,000.
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