Rathmines' Literary Heritage Transcript
Published on 27th May 2014
The following is a transcript of "Our Literary Heritage: A Sense of Place" on Wednesday 23 October 2013 at 6.30pm, in Rathmines Library.
Welcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode, marking the centenary of Rathmines Library, local writers Evelyn Conlon, Adrian Kenny, Siobhán Parkinson and Fintan Vallely read selected pieces of their work and discuss the locality and how it has influenced their writing. Chaired by Niall MacMonagle, the event also featured Fintan Vallely on the flute. Recorded in front of a live audience in Rathmines Library on 23 October 2013.
Niall MacMonagle: Both my father and grandfather were printers and I still have vivid memories from my time as a little boy in short trousers, because people of my generation wore short trousers when we were little boys, of the framed notice in the Killarney Printing Works in the entrance, and the framed notice beautifully printed I might add read, “This is a printing office, crossroads of civilisation, refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time. Friend, you stand on sacred ground, this is a printing office”. And libraries are also essential to reading and to civilisation. So for me, both the printing works and the library are intertwined in a wonderful, wonderful way and they have been essential to my happiness right throughout my life. I have lived in Rathmines since 1986. I visit this library every day except Sunday because it’s closed on a Sunday. (laughter) And it gives me great pleasure to come in at ten o’clock in the morning and to have ... the only other person I know who can avail of this pleasure is the Queen in Buckingham Palace because I believe Her Majesty is presented with the entire range of papers – tabloid and all – before her breakfast. But at ten o’clock every day the papers – The London Times, The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner and The Irish Independent – are in pristine condition and available on the table down below. Rathmines Library has improved and improved and improved since my first visiting and knowing it and when I saw the couch I said, ‘Well Graham Norton will arrive any moment’ (laughter).
We are the story telling species and we have been telling stories since way back and it’s a great pleasure to have four individual unique creative persons with us here this evening. 60,000 years ago according to recently discovered data geometric designs engraved on ostrich egg shells were found in Diepkloof Rock Shelter, the Western Cape South Africa and these egg shells are now thought to be the earliest form of written communication and there we were thinking that the graphic novel was a recent phenomenon. Cut to 15th century Germany when Johannes Gutenberg made possible what we are surrounded by right now, a place of books, the black marks on the page transformed into thoughts and feelings both an every day and magical process and the book – and these books before us on the table – represent, I think, for everyone here this evening one of civilisations greatest achievements and if we fast forward to the 21st Century the book on paper or on screen is still an involving, enriching, rewarding experience.
‘The only place you exist is in your head’ says the American novelist Paul Auster and John Milton from the 17th century says, ‘The mind is its own place’. But what we have invited these four distinguished people here before us this evening to do is to come to us and speak to us about a place. Now we’re not so reductionist that we expect them to talk only about Dublin 6 though they are all living within a stone’s throw or maybe a stone’s fling from this very library but first of all I will introduce these four special guests this evening and I am doing it in alphabetical order. First we have Evelyn Conlon, a short story writer, a novelist and an editor and a member of Aosdána and whenever I meet Evelyn Conlon and I meet her often in Rathmines I always come away energised because she has got a sparkly and spiky spoken delivery and it is also evident in her work. Her most recent novel has not yet been published on this side of the globe but it has been recently published in Australia and to great acclaim and it’s a story of Irish famine girls who were brought to Australia in the 19th Century and this is how it begins and this of course is the joy of Google. I can’t hold the book in my hand because it’s not available here yet but on screen they give you access to the open pages but here is how the prologue to Evelyn’s Not the Same Sky begins:
Joy Kennedy was standing in her pine kitchen, looking out at the surprised spring morning wondering if she wanted her life to change. This was something she did quite often.
And that is pure Evelyn Conlon. Look at the word surprised ... ‘at the surprised spring morning’ that is an alive use of language and ‘this was something she did quite often’ ... ‘wondering if she wanted her life to change’. So we are blessed and lucky to have Evelyn here with us this evening and she will read from her work.
Next up is Adrian Kenny who has most appropriately published his most recent title and is called Portobello Notebook. He also is a member of Aosdána. He has written to autobiographic novels, Before the Wax Hardened and The Family Business and other works include The Feast of Michaelmas, Arcady and other stories and Istanbul Diary. And Portobello Notebooks is obviously borne out of his affection and his involvement with a place just on the borders of Rathmines. Portobello is Dublin 8 but we’re welcoming him to Dublin 6 this evening big time.
Adrian Kenny: Thank you.
Now any of you with little persons in your households will realise that Siobhán Parkinson is a household name and she has published over the years twenty-five novels. She was our very first Laureate na nÓg and her titles include Sisters ... No Way!, Bruised. Her most recent novel, which I haven’t even caught up with yet, and it’s called:
Siobhán Parkinson: Heart Shaped.
Heart Shaped. And last Saturday the great Robert Dunbar when he pondered twenty-five years of reviewing children’s literature and he chose twelve Irish titles from the thousands of books that man has read he named among the twelve as one of the best children’s books of all time Siobhán Parkinson’s Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe) and the maybe there is pure Siobhán Parkinson. The quirky, questioning, humorous touch that she brings to her fictions, though Bruised which I have read, her most recent novel apart from Heart Break ...
Siobhán Parkinson: Heart Shaped.
... Heart Shaped, sorry. Better than Heart Break, Heart Shaped, (laughter) that that is a marvellous journey west and journey inwards in terms of young people in crisis.
And finally we have Professor Fintan Vallely and he comes to us with his flute and a very, very serious and huge tome before him, A Companion to Irish traditional Music. And his book A Complete Guide to Learning the Irish Flute is being launched this autumn by Waltons.
We’ve invited all four to read for six minutes or so and they’re going to read about place but as I mentioned earlier we don’t expect them to write about Rathmines as such. They live in Rathmines, they breathe the air of Rathmines but really where they live is in their imaginations and so when they make their art they are in their own place. So it’s not as if we’re expecting accounts of the familiar world about us in Rathmines but we don’t know what we’re about to expect but we’re looking forward to it very much.
So Evelyn if you would begin please, thank you very much. (Applause)
Evelyn Conlon: Thank you very much Niall for that great introduction. Well funnily enough when I was thinking about Rathmines and the effect that Rathmines on my work of all the books that I’ve written this one here A Glass Full of Letters I imagined the street in Rathmines because sometimes when you’re doing a work of fiction you have to actually place everything together even though you mightn’t use it, you have to have the colour of the door, the colour of your neighbour’s door, what’s happening around you – even though you mightn’t use it – and I very much had my own street in mind when I was writing that. Now I’ll obviously skip a little bit here to keep to the time so it might jump a little bit but we won’t worry about that, it won’t jump too much.
John Hanley was a slightly podgy man who lived in Rathmines in Dublin 6. He was not aware of this, his podginess, obviously he was aware that he was John Hanley and that he lived in Rathmines, on a side street offering him both the quietness of the cul-de-sac and the promise of the thoroughfare. Although he noticed recently their promise was becoming less important to him than it used to be and yet sometimes a loud laugh would drift in from the main street filling the air with an orchestra of hope, and it was then that he was glad that he still lived here. Glad he hadn’t succumbed out to the suburbs where you could have a proper garden for your retirement and you, unfortunately, recognised everyone you saw in the day. Or worse still, hadn’t sold up like a fool and launched out to Spain where he would have had to say every day that, No, he was not English. No, he was Irish. I’m Irish, and no it’s not the same thing. (laughter) His friend James Martin had done that, was now tanned and miserable and had taken to speaking as Gaeilge so that no one would mistake him for his neighbour. (laughter) James had stopped coming home too because people insisted on telling him the ups and the downs, and the ups and downs, and the downs again of the housing market but in another way he was doing well because when the locals in Spain lost their rags with too much drink and shouted at each other he didn’t know what their curses meant.
The world is a queer place thought John Hanley, all this living and learning and the earth could be sucked up into the sun any time now. Of course this was not scientifically true but John fancied some days that it was, and that it was silently happening faster than you would think. This was one of those days, and he would have to do something now, or he’ll be in a right gloom by the time Moira came in from the shops where she would have bought the days essentials and gathered up whatever news might be cheerful. That he had to hand to her. Like the blue bowerbird she only picked up bright bits, not like some of the women around here who walked past his window in the mornings, quick-stepped, straight-backed, but came back past again two hours later shoulders dropped, with a thunderous gloom weaving in and out of their pores.
He jumped up to switch off the radio. The proper news programme had just finished and the airwaves were about to be drenched by people who were thought famous because someone other than their mothers knew their names. After his retirement Moira had established this desk for him, although she had always had this corner sanctified by her cupboard of wine glasses. She looked a lot healthier since he had retired and James sometimes thought that perhaps she had been secretly drinking this past decade, and now that she can no longer do that, her liver was radiating a new glow, much like the earth will when it realises that it really is being sucked into the sun.
It is amazing how much time there is to think when you’re out of an office. No wonder the men who didn’t take up golf, took up drink up in Slattery’s or over in Birchall’s. Not him of course, he had plenty to do, weaving in and out around Moira’s day and doings. The first thing that he found was a bundle of post-holiday paraphernalia. Ah no, here was something he could do, sort the maps and the ship prices, the most interesting books, the boat timetables, satisfactory hotels – always impressed Moira that, when he found the right hotel. You really never could tell with women, they were so delighted by the easiest of things and on the other hand erupting like acidulated hurricanes about minor lapses. Maybe there was a code to it, a dictionary of distress. Maybe it had something to do with the orbit of their memories, the fact that they over explained the colour of the clothes but kept their mouths shut about the terror of their lives, whatever that might be. John didn’t know and in all honestly didn’t want to.
Now, there was that Swallow questionnaire. They had been coming back from France winding themselves up through England, getting ready for Holyhead, they had lost their way to the normal bleak clean Welsh guest house, so they had ventured in the door of what looked like a place that might be too expensive, but no, the price was fine and something in the way the receptionist flicked her pen made Moira say, ‘This is perfect’. It had to be the pen because nothing else had happened before Moira said, ‘This is perfect’. (laughter)
In France they had nudged their ways appropriately into past experiences, but diverged into new things when regret began to colour the hours. They agreed, without discussion, on the ways to do this. It’s such a strange thing what can be understood without verbals. A lot like our knowledge of facts without the science. The Swallow Hotel questionnaire besieged him. Okay, not besieged him, suggested to him to fill in the measure of his contentment with their premises. There were four square boxes to be ticked, each one eight of an inch by one eight of an inch, obviously as they were square. (laughter) They were headed excellent, not a word that delighted him because it had been flogged to death a number of years ago. There was also very good, good and poor. There wasn’t one called middling, never was with these things, but that was okay in this instance. What did you think of the outside appearance of the hotel? It was dark so we didn’t see. (laughter) What did you think of the service at the check-in? That would have to be excellent despite his feelings about the word. There was the matter of the flicking pen. What did you think of it overall? The cleanliness? What did you think about the heating? What did you think about the comfort of the bed? It was a bit rickety but it was possible to manoeuvre. What about the condition of the furniture? And then, he put in a lot of automatic very goods. Would you recommend this hotel to your friends? Certainly not, he said. I’d keep it quiet, no point in the neighbours knowing, it’s holidays we’re on. (laughter) Then there was accuracy of billing. Then there was value received. By the time John got to other comments he was away with it, breast stroking in deep pleasure.
Dear Manager,
Look, it was alright. Even though we had got lost and were late the bar man made us a fresh sandwich. There was a fine wine for my wife, she even remarked on the cut of the glass. Like one she used to have herself before it got broken - kept in the cupboard where my desk now is. The Speckled Hen bitter was as good as I’ve ever had, indeed I can taste it this minute. We were having a great night, but here I must tell you of something that happened and that I’m not very happy about. Now, how will I put this - in a room off your foyer there was a noisy group of people, manageable noisy I thought, or I hoped. However, every now and then some of them would saunter out to our bar and raucously order rounds of spirits. The men’s ties were all crooked and the women were speaking in a manner that did not fit in with the clothes that they were wearing. They would then, and I can only say lowering these drinks into their throats with the result that the volume of their outpourings rose in alarming notches. Luckily they would then dribble back to their own bar. When we thought we’d seen the last of them we decided to have a quiet night cap. What happened then was, I think, quite shocking. A woman emerged in a wedding dress, teetering dangerously on stiletto heels. It was one of those dresses that had no sleeves, nor indeed any discernible top. It was hard to make out where her shoulders ended and the next part of her body, so to speak, began. (laughter) She peered over at my wife and I, but I swear she couldn’t see us. She then sallied brazenly forth to three men who were, I presume, on a business journey and relaxing in each other’s proper company before the next day’s drive. They raised their eyes to her, they had no choice, and the lifting up of their faces gave her some sort of Hades-like signal to burst into the most offensively private thoughts that I have ever heard uttered. She concluded that it was a peculiar thing really that this morning she hadn’t been married at all, and that now she was. As she swayed over her shoes, I thought what a better place marriage might have been if it had not admitted her. We were all in shock. She then complained that most of her guests were already in bed and wondered why. I didn’t.
Now you see, the trouble about this intrusion was not only the disgrace of it but that it put us in mind of our own wedding day and what stately affairs they were in comparison. And although you may think that that should have made us grateful, it also unsettled our pleasant night cap. We were after all about to go to our beds and although I know that technically you may not think that the night time retirements of your guests has anything to do with you, they are a part of the package. I will say no more on that issue because if you don’t get embarrassed I will, but really this letting loose of a drunk bride into our bar was extremely disturbing.
She then disappeared back to her quarters, much to our relief. The three men and the two of us tried not to look at each other but, in truth, the gratifying anonymous space between us had been muddled. We were silent for a while and then the party surrounded us. I noticed the groom had hoped that he might bring some order to the tone but he looked shell shocked and had nothing to say. He too began to sway back and forth on his flat shoes. The bride, for that’s what I would still call her, raucously slapped the poor groom on the back and guffawed, ‘Imagine, guaranteed sex every night!’ The guests, all of them, erupted into what I can only say was the sound you would expect from a Bruegel painting. We, I’m afraid, had no choice but to leave our unfinished drinks.John let his pen waver dangerously over the form before continuing. He was wondering if he should add more and he wasn’t even searching for a blank page when he was suddenly overcome with sadness. He looked out his window and he rested his eyes on the tree that they had saved from the builders, and he longed for Moira to be finished the shopping down in Rathmines. But then a mysterious thing happened, the tree shook itself like a dog after getting out of the sea, from nowhere. A feeling of forgiveness spread over him like a blush, and he put aside the questionnaire. The Rathmines clock jolted him as it rang out its exact time. Moira opened the door and the sound of a fog horn slithered in with her. John closed the desk and got up to help her. ‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘Nothing’ he said, and never mentioned the earth being sucked into the sun.
(Applause)
Adrian Kenny: I’ll come back to Rathmines later. I’ll read a story from this, Portobello Notebook, I’ll read the last one in it, it’s called “Mr Pock”.
It’s late, 11.30 at night. It’s raining, the first rain in a month. Both windows are wide open still, it’s been so warm. You can hear the rain falling in the back garden, rattling on the privet trees. He can see their cream blossoms even in the dark. The sweet scent comes even through the rain. Then he hears it a groan. Standing up he looks out in the dark backs of the houses in the next street. It comes again. It’s like the sound of another species. It’s been so long since he was a part of that, it’s a while before he realises what it is. His wife goes on reading, he goes on writing his letter. It goes on for five minutes more. There’s a boy’s cry, and at last it’s over. A light comes on, and a girl’s face appears at an open window leaning out smoking a cigarette.
After thirty years living in this street he sees it through the glass of time. When the young couples leave their doors open these summer evenings he sees, not just their pale sanded floorboards but the carpeted front rooms of the people who lived there before. There’s a story in every house. The derelict garage door is black, because Mr Campbell came out one morning, sweating, in a mini-skirt, with a pot of paint and covered it with zig-zags, they took him away. The black cat is watching Delia’s house because she gives him food.
He’s been here so long he remembers the beginning of that story, a few street cats slowly growing wild. They hunted the canal bank reeds for ducklings, waited under cars for the street pigeons to land. At night he heard them on the rooftop, running down the valley after rats. When his children were small they had tried to tame one, lured it inside at last and shut the door. That was when they saw what wild meant – spitting, screaming like a fire work, throwing itself against the window until they set it free. He saw it on the back garden wall one evening crouched under a tom, and the next year a wild litter was born. And the next. One winter night he saw a dozen of them, a black inbred pack, hunting in the snow. A neighbour called the Corporation who came and trapped a few. Others left for better territory, in the end there was only this one. He waits until the door has shut then advances slowly. The thick lace curtain opens and Delia appears at her front window to watch him eat.And now there is the new face that appears at the back window - young golden-brown – in a frame of oiled black hair. If she weren’t so tall she could be from the Philippines. Maybe South America, he thinks. When he goes down for the milk and paper in the morning, she is coming round the corner, setting out for work. She doesn’t walk on the pavement but in the middle of the street, along a straight black seam of tar. He notices her springy breasts, her pale tight blue jeans, her bottom twitching like the waterhen’s white rump when it runs down the canal bank from the cat.
One day going past the restaurant, he sees her inside cleaning the big window. As she reaches up to spray the top half with an aerosol he sees her bared brown stomach, a jewel swinging from a gold naval ring. He smiles at her and she looks through him as if he were a windowpane.He gives the same glance to old Delia. She reminds him of what’s ahead. Usually he walks past with a word about the weather, but now she has a pretext. ‘You didn’t see Mister Pock?’
‘Who?’ He has to stop.
‘The cat. That’s what they do call him.’
‘He was in our garden yesterday he killed a sparrow.’
‘Well did he?’ Seeing his look, she withdraws. ‘Well isn’t he terrible’.
Her wirrastrue country accent, the Maria wooden plaque screwed outside her door - everything about her gets on his nerves. He is about to slip away but she says, ‘You wouldn’t open a tin for me. That tin opener, it’s as stiff’.
She can’t go upstairs any longer, her bed fills the front room. A Sacred Heart picture hangs over the fireplace, the heating is on full blast, Daniel O’Donnell is on the TV crooning a song. As soon as he opens the tin of Whiskas he almost runs out the door. But a threshold has been crossed. Now each time he passes he has to stop and talk. Her big lonely eyes fix on his. He can’t escape.
So he remembers how it happened, he knows how it was done. He’s at her doorstep talking when the cat comes round the corner, belly slung low, yellow-green eyes with black-slit slanted pupils looking left and right. It’s the first time he’s been so close to him, he sees his black coat is flecked with white hairs. Delia smiles, and he rubs his side against the lamppost, then he brushes against her legs. ‘Well Mister Pock,’ she says ‘Are you going to come in?’ She goes inside, leaving the door open. The cat glances over his shoulder and slowly steps in.
As he’s going down the street one morning, her door opens and Mister Pock slips out. Delia blushes like a girl when she sees him. He glimpses her bare feet, a pink nightdress as she withdraws. But another threshold has been crossed. Soon she is ringing him at night. ‘Well, were looking at the Late Late?’
‘I missed it’ he says.
‘Indeed you didn’t miss much. They had this fella with long hair on talking for half an hour. Now, Pat, I said to myself, if you’ve any sense you won’t argue with him. That’s just what he wants…’
He doesn’t answer one night. An hour later the blue flashing light of a squad car stops outside her door. Two guards go in. He rings when they’ve gone.
‘What happened, are you alright?’
‘I couldn’t open the tin, and I said to myself, I’ll ring Kevin Street, well they were the nicest lads - and do you know what one, of them is from Ballindine. Delia, they said, do you mean to say the neighbour wouldn’t do that for you?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Delia, they said, it’s no trouble in the wide world. Any time you want, just pick up the phone, they said.’
‘Don’t,’ he says. He has to. ‘Ring me’
She rings in the evening, as soon as they turn on the light. ‘It’s only me.’
‘How are you?’
‘Well I’m that worried, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I haven’t seen Mister Pock for these two days.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out for him.’
‘You couldn’t have a look now?’
He can’t refuse the timid weak voice, he can’t fight back. With the phone to his ear he walks round the corner, and down the next street. He finds him lying under a hedge in a neat front garden beside a fat ginger cat.
‘He’s here.’
‘Oh thanks be to the Sacred Heart. Where?’
‘Right beside me.’
‘Pock’ - she begins, and he holds the phone through the railings. Pock bares his stained brown teeth and draws back. ‘Pock, do you hear me? Do you know what I’m after buying for you? A bit of chicken.’ The fat ginger cat slides out through the railing. Mister Pock follows at her tail. He hears their meeting screams from derelict garage roof that night.She rings as usual when their light comes on. He kicks the wall savagely, then picks up the phone. ‘How are you?’
‘Musha, only middling’.
His kick leaves a mark in the plaster. He kneels down and rubs it clean. ‘How’s Mister Pock?’
‘Look at him, lying on the bed like a lord. Do you know what, I think he only comes here when it suits him.’
‘You don’t need anything?’
‘Well that’s what I was going to ask. You wouldn’t feed himself while I’m away?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘They say I have to go into hospital.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight, they said. You wouldn’t come over, and I’ll give you the food’.She hardly ate any longer. Her legs were as thin as her walking stick. He says, ‘You should get the Meals on Wheels when you come home.’
‘Indeed I tried that. Sure it’s not food at all.’
‘And what would you like?’
‘Do you know what it is, I think there’s nothing nicer than a nice new potato.’
‘Why don’t you try that?’
‘Well God knows you’re right…’ She turns to a cardboard crate full of cat food. ‘What he likes is the liver-flavour Whiskas mixed with rusks. Isn’t that right, Pock?’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ he says.
Pock slides from his armchair and springs onto her lap. From there he sticks out his small pink tongue, as if to say fuck off. He’d like to, but he sits and listens as Delia talks on and on. It’s only right.
She came from a village in Mayo. Her parents died when she was young. She worked in a hotel in Dublin, and with her savings bought this small house… he sees that everything about her is valiant. He still wants to run out the door.
‘And then you came along…’ She tries to lift the cat with her bird’s-feet hands. He’s too heavy. She stoops to kiss him instead. She begins to cry when the doorbell rings. He slides from her lap when the taxi man comes in and then walks in a slow circle rubbing against his legs. The man takes her suitcase and goes out to the car.
‘You look after him, won’t you?’ Her voice is piteous tears trickle down through the wrinkles in her cheeks.
He says ‘I will’.He’s squatting on his haunches pouring rusks into the plastic bowl. And who comes by? The beautiful girl. She stops when the cat walks around her, rubbing his side against her legs. Even standing still she’s moving all the time - her hands, head, eyes, hips - restless, natural, eager, in a way that reminds him what youth is. She is like a blossom the day it opens, stiff as the stem, rippling as if in a breeze. She makes him want to shine, but not to show off. She makes him want to be worthy of life, to be noble somehow.
She asks about the old woman he minded. He says she’s gone into hospital. He asks where she comes from, she says Uruguay. He asks what is the capital of Uruguay. She says Montevideo. He thinks this could go on all day. He says he thinks the Irish used to emigrate to Montevideo. She says now it’s the other way round, and he feels the force of her shining smile. It won’t have weariness, and it won’t accept déjà vu. He can no more leave it and go indoors from the spring sunlight. She says she sees him from her window, she asks is he retired. He says he sees her working in the restaurant - and then he makes a mistake. To keep the conversation going, to go on breathing the scent of her youth, he asks what her boyfriend does. She says she doesn’t have a boyfriend. There’s an eye blink’s pause, and he sees her realising what he meant. As she walks up the street along the straight black seam of tar, he knows she won’t speak to him again. He’s made a mistake.When Delia died she was brought back to her village and buried. Her house was put up for sale. Everything, the Sacred Heart picture, the Welcome doormat, the lace curtain - was thrown out into a skip. That was a year ago, but he cat comes up the street every morning, belly swinging low, yellow-green eyes glancing left and right. There are saucers and dishes outside a dozen doors now – meat, chicken, milk, fish – all for Mister Pock. He springs onto a parked car’s bonnet, lies on the sun warmed metal, springs down and chases his shadow, dabs a paw at a blowing leaf. The young couples stroke him, he rubs his side against her legs, rolls onto his back. They walk away slowly, looking over their shoulders calling. He follows for a few yards then stops. The old writer and his wife leave their door open, but he won’t go in. He won’t enter any other house. He looks across the street at Delia’s window and he cries piteously.
(Applause)
"Mister Pock", Portobello Notebook by Adrian Kenny
Niall MacMonagle: This is a very children-friendly library and that is as it should be and we’ve heard two writers who write for adults and we are very grateful for that. Siobhán Parkinson has also written for adults but she has also written for children and children today downstairs in their exploration of books will become tomorrow’s adult readers and anyone here, and all of us here, I can take it, are people who realised a deep, deep pleasure of reading. The sooner it begins the better it is. So it’s entirely fitting that we’ve a children’s author like Siobhán Parkinson here this evening because without the children’s writing, so exciting and individual to them, there might never be adult reading.
Siobhán Parkinson: Thank you very much Niall. I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I think mine was mixed up with some other invitation I got to go somewhere else where the instructions where I was going to read a short piece of my own and then a short piece of somebody else’s so I spent about two hours this afternoon preparing that (laughs) and then as we approached the library this evening my husband said, ‘You know it’s about a sense of place. It’s about Rathmines.’ And I said ‘No it’s not.’ I said ‘It couldn’t be’. He said ‘No it is’ and he said, ‘you did actually set a book in Rathmines’, it’s called Amelia, ‘Will I go home and get it?’ and I said ‘No you won’t’ and he said ‘Well why not?’ and I said ‘I’m not going to read from it, I haven’t prepared, I’m not going to do it’ and he said ‘Oh I’ll go home, I’ll go and get it’ and I said ‘Oh they’ll have it in the library’. So there it is, you can see it and it’s set in Kenilworth Square but I’m not going to read that instead I’m going to read the piece I prepared. And unfortunately I see there are a couple of people in the audience who already heard me read this so please forgive me that I’m reading a piece that you already know but that can’t be helped.
This is from Heart Shaped and Heart Shaped is not a sequel to but a companion novel to the much grimmer novel that I have beside it which is caused Bruised and what’s going on is that in Bruised there’s a young boy and his sister who run away from home and there’s a very, very peripheral, very slight peripheral character in Bruised who is a girl that Jonathan sort of fancies and she sort of fancies him but they have not gone any further than this fancying stage and then he runs away from home. So somebody once asked me what was going on with Annie, the girl, what about her? And I said, ‘Well I didn’t put anything about her in the book because it’s all from Jonathan’s point of view, you can’t mix points of view like that it’s confusing for the audience. But I began to think well maybe I could write something about Annie so this is where the Heart Shaped book came from, it’s the other side of the story. So Annie is at home and she’s feeling a bit neglected because her boyfriend has disappeared – or potential I suppose I should say – and she is having to fall back on her own resources. And this chapter is called “Death by Bananas” and Annie is fourteen. I decided I wouldn’t read something that was too young if I had an adult audience so this is for I suppose the mid-teens.
I went over to Emma’s the next day after school. That was the day after the row with Dad that wasn’t really a row, and the day before the world came to an end. It’s like a cat, the world. But if it has nine lives, I really don’t want to be there for any more of its deaths. There have been three already and I’m only fourteen.
We were supposed to be practising a hard bit in the Elgar. He is a composer, but you call the music after the composer. At least the head honcho does. He says, Open your Elgars. Page two, bar twenty-five. So obviously that is the music, not the composer personally, because in the first place, there is only one Elgar and in second place, he is dead, and in the third place, dead or alive, he is not in the room. (Though I suppose there might have been more than one Elgar, when you come to think of it. Everyone has a family and mostly they have the same name as you, or they did in the past anyway. It is kind of comforting to think of famous people as having a mother and a father, Mr and Mrs Elgar, no doubt, and being all normal like everyone else. Mr and Mrs Shakespeare. That sounds weird. Mr and Mrs Christ. No that’s wrong. That was Mr and Mrs God, wasn’t it? Oh it’s very confusing. I think the modern thing is better where everyone is all partners now and you can’t depend on anyone, on people in the same family having the same name. And fourthly, and this is the clincher, Elgar does not have a page two or a bar twenty-five, he has or had a nose and ten fingers and an unknown number of teeth and so on.
Oh now I’m getting a bit skittish. That’s Dad’s word for it. I call it being philosophical, but. he’s more correct. I just think these ideas and I have to see where they go, that’s all. That’s allowed. Or it should be. In an ideal world. Which I realise this is not.
Anyway, we were supposed to be practising, but pretty soon we got diverted. The clarinets aren’t paying attention, head honcho was always shouting, The clarinets are talking. By which he means of course me and Emma, not the actual clarinets. It’s a bit like Elgar being the music and not the composer.
It’s nice being round at Emma’s. I like her mother, she is large and jolly, like a mother in a story book. I call her Mrs Duggan, but she tells me to call her Sarah but I can’t, I’ve known her since I was two.
Emma’s mother called us for our tea. She’s dead nice, Mrs Duggan, as I think I said. That is to say, she is nice but not dead. A very good combination that. Tea was pancakes with sugar and lemons but it is Pancake Tuesday apparently, I didn’t even know that. Now that’s where a mother would come in handy. They have that sort of information.
She gave us bananas for afters. Afters, a pancakes! Emma couldn’t eat hers, so I said I would eat it for her. She said, You want to be careful, too many bananas are poison.
That’s a mad idea. Too many bananas can’t possibly be poison. I told Emma I didn’t believe that. ‘It’s true’ she said, ‘Bananas are full of potassium’.
‘Potassium is good for you,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but too much can kill you.’
‘Come on, Emma’ I said. ‘You are not seriously trying to tell me you can die from eating bananas.’
‘You can. From eating too many, you can get potassium poisoning.’
‘Well, I don’t think two would be too many.’
‘Yeah’ she said. ‘But maybe ten or twenty. I don’t know what a lethal dose is.’
‘Who would want to eat twenty bananas?’ I said.
‘I dunno’ she said. ‘Maybe it would be a cool way to commit suicide’.
I went still, very still, just for a moment – but then I laughed, because what was the point of saying all stiff and censorious, like an adult, There is no such thing as a cool way to commit suicide, Emma and anyway that wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. So instead I said, ‘Well maybe if you were in a banana plantation.’
‘Yeah and very depressed,’ Emma said, laughing her head off.
Not that depression is funny of course, but the idea of being depressed in a banana plantation is funny. It’s funny what’s funny.
Then I had another funny thought. Maybe you could murder someone with bananas. I don’t know how you’d get them to eat the bananas though. You’d had to put a gun to their head. But if you had a gun why would you bother with the bananas?
‘Are you a boy in a girl’s body or what?’ Emma asked, when I said that about the bananas and the gun.
‘No’ I said, ‘but listen it could work. They would eat the bananas because they wouldn’t know it was going to kill them. They would think it was better than being shot. And then there’d be no evidence because all you’d have done was to tell them to eat the bananas. You can’t murder someone just by talking to them, can you? It’s a perfect crime. I think I will write a detective story with that plot. You’re not to steal it on me now’.
‘You are such a weirdo’ said Emma.
That’s Emma for you. That’s why she’s my friend and I love her to bits. Not because she called me a weirdo obviously but because we have such good laughs together. You need a good laugh now and again. Even if you’re heartbroken. Or maybe especially if you’re heartbroken.
(Applause)
Heart Shaped by Siobhán Parkinson
Niall MacMonagle: Ian Foster said that we need all words and we need all fine writing, there is music, and our fourth contributor this evening is a man of music and we are lucky that he has brought his flute so we might have that very special world that only music creates as well in addition to the written word. Fintan Vallely: (Applause)
Fintan Vallely: I came with the idea of place in my mind so I hope I have fitted the music as well and then Niall also asked me to read something from a book. The trouble is the books that I’ve written they all tend to be things like this, they’re an encyclopaedia with half a million words etc., it’s not really something you read gently. When I started thinking about the place for tonight’s event I realised that I actually came to this area first in 1968, then after wanderings I ended up coming back here again in 1980 and I’m here ever since. And then I found out at some stage during all of that the fact that my grandfather and my grandmother lived over the foundations of the Ulster Bank over in Ranelagh and my mother lived here at some stage. There’s all these family connections which keep coming up and I’ve still got cousins over there even though I was reared in County Armagh so I am probably more of this area than I am of anywhere else. My connection to the library here is that I played the flute for many years when I was about thirteen or fourteen and at a very young age I started teaching it because when you start playing an instrument which not too many people playing especially in the 1960s there was a demand for teaching for it. And I was teaching here in the house where we’re living, at the back of the clock tower there, at a time when the Swan Centre was only a glint in the developer’s eye, back in the early 1980s. Some wee kid I was teaching said, ‘Is there no book for the flute?’ and like Niall’s father and uncle I worked as a printer at the time so I thought sure I can do one of those so I sat down and I did work out this book. I came to the library here, I found references in the library to all sorts of things to do with the flute. I was very naive. Anyway this book came out, it came out in 1986 and it’s actually being launched in two weeks time as a new edition by Walton’s in Dublin in George’s Street. It’s now three times the size of the original which means that either I now know three times as much or at the time I only knew one third of what I should have known. (laughter) So getting onto to the more modern, I’ve written a lot of books but they’re all about music and they’re about stuff in music but one of the things that struck me was that in this area is that just a few doors down from here it’s now the playing field for St. Mary’s College there was a terrace of houses there and in one of those houses, number 67, a man called George Petrie lived and Petrie was kind of the selected father of archaeology and archaeological method if you like in Ireland but he was also a music collector and he made one of the biggest collections of Irish music collections in the 18 ... it came out in the 1860s and it was transcribed by himself and his daughter by candlelight down in that house there because he worked from the Ordnance Survey at the time. So the idea of working by candlelight trying to transcribe music and then quite interesting, just an interesting thought that all this music endeavour was going on. Years later almost in the same area down there was one of the very first folk clubs in the revival years of Irish music, in the 60s, the Swamp Folk Club it was known as, and a lot of people, like Andy Irvine and Paul Brady, they all cut their teeth in that place as well. So I just want to read a small wee bit here from the book. Again it brings in Rathmines and it brings in a few residents of Rathmines. One of whom Rosita Sweetman she was having an event over in a gallery in Harcourt Street one time and the poster was in for An Tóstal which was kind of a cultural event. If you like it was an early version of The Gathering which we had this year, it was the very first one of those gatherings. The idea was to bring people to Ireland at some time other than during the summer time. So Tony Cronin was at the same event and he started telling yarns about An Tóstal and out of that I got an article for this encyclopaedia because I didn’t know anything about An Tóstal beforehand. So this is just dipping in the middle of the article:
Disgruntled literary, political and artistic avant-gardists who had to duck the swing of many batons and croziers at the time provided a metaphoric memorial to this minor mass movement. An Tóstal’s symbol was a sculpture in the form of a moving ‘bowl of light’ displayed on a pedestal on O’Connell Bridge, ‘a plastic flame poking up through a hideous metal dish’ [Morash, 2004]. This eternal fire was lit by President Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh following a night of enthusiastic celebration, sod-throwing and window-breaking by disaffected youths for whom ‘culture’ and An Tóstal was a mystery. Regarding the sculpture as something of an affront, considering the hardship of the artist’s life at that time, writer Anthony Cronin, (who was later the instigator of Aosdána), notes that ‘thinking people regarded An Tóstal as the ultimate snub to intellectualism and art’. This rendered ‘the bowl’, as it was called ‘the bowl’, a target for considerable derision and it was satirised by among others Flann O’Brian. On one boisterous occasion – following drink I think – Tony Cronin lobbed a stone into the device frustrating its mechanism. He was struck from behind by a baton, and unaware of the nature of his assailant lashed back blindly with the portable typewriter on which he had been working in The Bell magazine’s offices, thereby inadvertently committing an assault also on a Garda. Various other notables of the thinking classes were present, and one of them, Brendan Behan, transformed the occasion into a verse in ballad tradition parodying The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám saying:
‘Awake for Cronin and the bowl of light
Has flung the stone that put the stars to flight’.The ‘bowl’ was later dumped in the Liffey by drunken students, (among them a certain successful solicitor-to-be whose name can’t be mentioned) in circumstances similar to those that prevailed on the night of its inauguration. An Tóstal outlived its monument notably so at Drumshanbo, County Leitrim where it has run continuously since 1955. But its 2009 programme retrospectively accords prophetic justice to Cronin’s frustrated action for the listed events now include ‘The Culchie Pentathlon’ and its other offerings similarly in that they underscore that An Tóstal’s primary function is less about the mind and more about mardi-gras.
"An Tostal" in The Companion to Irish Traditional Music ed. Fintan Vallely
That’s just a small extract. It’s not all as light as that but it’s similar kinds of information in all the articles in the book.
I’m going to finish in the last minute by playing a tune. It was one of the tunes which was collected and transcribed by George Petrie and his daughter in the house down the road here so it’s a jig called the “Barley Grain”. Now I’m going to play it on ... this is a pyramid instrument, this is a walking stick flute and these things were widely popular in the middle of the 1800s, around the time Petrie was collecting the music. Every gentleman had one of these and you went out walking, you had your stick and you picked it up and you played the tune. They also had walking stick fiddles as well. (laughter) They were a bit more popular I guess.
(Fintan Vallely plays "The Barley Grain" on the flute) (Applause).
Questions and Answers
Niall MacMonagle (NMM): Now there’s a way to end. Now we do have some time for questions but may I just ask one question of all of you to begin please, we’re all grateful that we have a place to lie down at night and rest our weary bones but in your work is place, the place you inhabit in your daily life, is that place a help or a hindrance in terms of your imagined worlds? Or can you imagine living someplace else and that being more beneficial or less beneficial, do you follow?
Evelyn Conlon (EC): Yes I do yeah. Now, that’s interesting because in some ways when I was thinking about this I feel that in a way and probably because of the circumstances of how I came to live in Rathmines…that I got my freedom in Rathmines to be a writer, in a way. And yet at times, and I was just speaking about this today to a young woman who is going to start a publishing company, I mean can you imagine the folly of that. (laughter) But I was talking ... I was thinking about ways that I had written within Rathmines and when my children were young and the space that’s needed to create was missing sometimes, even when I had brought them to school, and one book ... I can’t remember which one it was it was mostly written in a car at Sandymount beach because what I would do is drive down there, go for a walk and then go into the car and write.
NMM: And were you living in Rathmines then?
EC:Yeah, yeah.
NMM: So Rathmines wasn’t conducive ...?
EC: Where I was living wasn’t conducive.
NMM: Okay.
EC: Yeah, yeah. But then there are other times in which when I would ... and I would still do it when something like really serious has piled up one of the great things is to take a boat from Dun Laoghaire or Dublin and boat and train to London and you can get 2 weeks’ work done on the way. Now that’s obviously because you’ve done a lot of the work in your head and then that’s it because you’re gone from the space but mostly all my work is done in Rathmines, even if it’s prepared there but maybe written somewhere else.
NMM: So you bring the space you make here with you ...?
EC: Yeah.
NMM: Right. Adrian? I mean Portobello Notebook and that wonderful story is rooted just over the bridge.
Adrian Kenny (AK): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah well I spent my life running away from Ireland but I never succeeded really in staying away for more than a year or so at any time, I always came back, I don’t know whether that’s a weakness on my part or a sign of some goodness.
NMM: Now you’re a Dub but were you always this neck of the woods?
AK: Yeah I was born ... I spent ... I used to come here from 1955 about onwards and then when I started leaving home in the 60s I didn’t and then I came back again in 1980 to Portobello and I used to bring my children up here. This was the children’s library, this room, then. But they say the Irish have a stronger and deeper sense of place and I think there’s some truth in that. I don’t know why because you know there’s songs all over the world. I’m sure Fintan would agree about the homeland and these green hills are ... what was in that ...
Fintan Vallely(FV): I think it’s the same everywhere, yeah.
AK: What?
FV: I think it’s the same everywhere and everybody thinks theirs is special.
Siobhán Parkinson (SP):Yeah the people who say that are ourselves, you know I don’t think other people say that the Irish have a stronger sense of self (laughs), we have, we say that.
AK: Yeah that’s an interesting ... yeah we think we’re special in everything yeah, yeah, yeah.
SP: Yeah we do, yeah. Well I love where I live, I really love it and I can’t imagine living ... well I can imagine living somewhere else, obviously I can imagine, but I wouldn’t want to.
NMM: You don’t hanker for the west of Ireland or for Donegal? Your Galway/ Donegal ...?
SP: Yeah I do have Galway/Donegal connections but no I’m a Dubliner really and I love where I live but I love it to live in it. I don’t really think about it much when I come to work. I mean that book was set in Kenilworth Square but that’s not where I live I live in Kenilworth Park which is very downmarket from Kenilworth Square I can tell you (laughter) and in a way that was inspirational ...
NMM: That was also an historical novel, it was ...
SP: Yes, yeah. But it was because that place looked so glorious to me, it wasn’t because I actually ... well I knew I suppose it but it wasn’t my home.
NMM: But the piece you read Siobhán was more the place inside her head. Her emotional ...
SP: Absolutely, yeah. You could say it was set in a banana plantation in a way.
NMM: Right, right.
SP: Sort of yeah but it was also set in just somebody’s bedroom in a place in Ireland, in suburban Ireland, it could be anywhere really. It’s probably Dublin and it’s possibly Crumlin but I’m not entirely sure whether it’s really Crumlin. I’m not ... most of my books don’t have a very strong sense of place, I think. Partly because I don’t want to alienate children who don’t know the place that I’m writing about so even if I have a clear sense myself of where a place might be or where a book might be set I usually don’t name it and then everybody can think it’s their place, yeah.
NMM: That’s what Melvin Burgess said as well, he rarely names a place because then we can bring our own world to it.
SP: Yeah, yeah, yeah or if I have to name it I’ll give it a fictional name, I make up my own, yeah.
NMM: Right. Fintan, as someone steeped in Irish traditional music, is Rathmines a good place to be? Because I mean I love Rathmines, I love its multiculturalism, I love its transience even though I’m here and I hope to stay here, you know it’s bedsit-land, you still have people coming through, everyone has a bedsit story from Rathmines and they have moved to salubrious else-wheres – many of them. But I just love it here because it’s real, it’s edgy, the Rathmines Road, those buses or cycling to town or walking to town and if you need something you suddenly realise it’s available in Rathmines.
SP: Yeah, yeah.
NMM: But what about the music world and Rathmines?
FV: Well the traditional music world that I’m part of it’s all about place but it’s all about other places around the country – you know Donegal, Galway, Clare, Sliabh Luachra, you know Kerry, Waterford – but at the same time the irony is that there is more traditional music played in Dublin than there is around the country because there are more people and for me it’s just I think maybe home is, if you like, where your heart is, where you feel most comfortable I guess. The best work I ever do in writing in particular or preparing stuff for lectures or whatever is in Rathmines and I must have done about between theses and books – I’ve over twenty different books – all done in that little house just across the road at the back of the town hall and I’d never thought about it but that is where I work best and it’s ... but what I like about Rathmines is that it’s not pretentious about itself, it doesn’t boast anything.
SP: Apart from Kenilworth Square of course.
FV: Apart from ... (laughter) ... but there is say the Rathmines and Rathgar Operatic Society who I first heard in Armagh in 1966 but there was other things which like the College of Music which is at the back of this building here, there’s an awful lot of stuff going on in the world of music and a lot of musicians live here who you never see. You see them the odd time, so there’s a lot of stuff going on. There’s lots of chance meetings and maybe that’s what’s good about it. It’s not a clichéd existence at all. There don’t seem to me to be any regular paths for you where you would meet people but certainly for me it’s been a ... maybe that’s why I actually like it to work, it doesn’t intrude at all on any routine that you might have.
SP: No. That’s because it’s so varied, people don’t go the same place every day because there’s so many places you can go, it’s very various around here isn’t it? You don’t need people to shop in the same supermarket.
NMM: But if we all like Rathmines what would be on our wish list for something new about ... I mean we are getting the largest cinema screen in Ireland I believe, it’s being built across the way, opening at Christmas.
SP: We are?
AK: In the Swan Centre? Where the present one is?
NMM: Yes they’re building two more cinemas and one will have the largest cinema screen in all of Ireland.
FV: That means we’ll never be able to park our cars again but there you are. (laughter)
NMM: But what would you wish for Rathmines, if you all had a wish?
SP: I wish you’d asked me that before (laughs) to think about it. A wish for Rathmines?
EC: I think maybe it’s too ... I wish for more trees. That’s the only thing I’d wish for in Rathmines.
SP: Yeah that’s nice.
EC: Other than that I kind of like the fact that it changes sometimes and gets a bit gaudy in some places and then it changes again but I do think it needs more trees. That’s the only thing.
SP: Not more coffee shops although not because I don’t want a coffee shop just we have plenty of them but there’s a lovely new one in Alan Hanna’s bookshop if people don’t know about it. But I would have said the last thing Rathmines needed was a new coffee shop but actually I was wrong. (laughter)
NMM: You know if you think of writers, some writers, I mean Thomas Hardy is par excellence, the man rooted in description. I once leant a Thomas Hardy novel to a friend, she loved it but she skipped all the descriptions (laughter), she just read the conversations and I said, (laughs) ‘You’ve missed the best bits’ but you know some people aren’t given to descriptions of place.
EC: I think maybe just from the point of view of fiction in a way what happens… every fiction writer would describe a different thing about a place.
SP: Yeah.
EC: They might describe like say for instance in that story, some of which I skipped, but generally it’s not a huge description about Rathmines but it’s placed there, so the clock rings in the background and the woman goes out to shop in Rathmines and whatever, however, if you were to give a sentence to any writer they will all come up with something completely different. So a sense of place really in a way is very much what we as individuals either as writers or as individuals who walk the streets it’s all of our own sense of place is in itself completely individualistic.
SP: And also a sense of place, I mean you were saying about the visual sense of place but not everybody’s sense of place is visual, it can be atmospheric ...
EC: Yeah.
SP: ... and that’s very subtle I mean, you don’t necessarily get that from a few paragraphs or even from a short story. It’s a kind of a thing that kind of can permeate a novel, the atmosphere of place without it ever being named or without it ever being physically described.
NMM: Yes?
Attendee: Everyone was dramatic and so expressive but especially Evelyn Conlon, are you into drama? Were you as a child always? Because you are really dramatic. I was wondering if someone would read it without you would it be the same effect because you really do it so well. The other lady, sorry, Siobhán Parkinson, also is, but she is especially good. Would you agree? You are brilliant, especially dramatic (laughter) Evelyn, did you study drama?
EC: No, no, no.
Attendee: But were you always trying to express, to share, to ... because you do it very well. I wish all actors would do the same and I do think you do good for your book, other people, when they won’t read the way you pronounce maybe the effect would be not the same.
EC: Probably not. Probably not. But thank you very much. I’ll just tell you this story very briefly. I was doing a residency in the Djerassi Centre in America and it’s actually run ... it’s owned by Carl Djerassi who is one of the three men who made the $85 million each or whatever from patenting the contraceptive pill in the 1960s. He’s still alive and he writes some plays which are actually not very good but he was there and I was reading and he asked me afterwards if I would like to act in one of his plays and I said, ‘No I’m not an actor.’ (laughs). But anyway I was only away ... I was writing about capital punishment in the United States and I was on my way home, I wasn’t interested in any of this, but I came home and I kind of had an agent at the time who was horrified when she heard that I had turned down Carl Djerassi (laughs). She said it was your one chance to make money, serious money. But anyway, thank you very much but no but I’m not an actor, no. And yes I have heard occasionally somebody reading something of what I’ve written and it doesn’t seem the same but it may seem better, who is to say, because a reader is reading and the voice is gone you know. In a way it’s an extraordinary thing, you write the book and then what happens is the relationship is a very private one with the reader and the book and the author is gone altogether.
Attendee: Are you going to theatre? Are you a theatre goer?
EC: No not really actually.
Attendee: No? Just naturally with your character, to deal with your character, with your way of life.
NMM: Well that’s the wonderful thing about authors and readers and readings because they bring to it what they obviously know intimately and well. I mean I will never forget hearing Alice Monroe read a story in Trinity College. She stood up she said, ‘Good evening’. She said, ‘Thank you’ at the end of the evening. She read in a calm controlled voice which is part of the world of her story and it wasn’t at all dramatic but it was equally wonderful and interesting. So I think the voice suits the word but I am looking at the clock and is there any other observation or question from the audience? Well before I thank the four special guests this evening I would now like to read a poem by Czesław Miłosz – sixteen lines long so don’t panic – and this poet is Seamus Heaney’s favourite from the second half of the 20th Century and we’re in a library and the poem is called:
And Yet the Books
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
NMM: Fintan Vallely, Siobhán Parkinson, Adrian Kenny, Evelyn Conlon, thank you for a wonderful, wonderful enriching evening. Thank you. (Applause)
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