Michael Farry

30 December 2008

Words! Words! Words!

This is a sign I see every day I stroll along the Boyne. Does it mean that previous prices asked were unrealistic? It certainly suggests that. What does a realistic price actually mean?

Then the "stunning views". No-one I meet on my walk seems stunned by the views. OK some tourists seem quite taken by the Castle and spend some time taking photographs but "stunned"? No! Anyway what are the views?

Below is the view of the Boyne from the front gate of the property. Can you see the little hint of water on the left? Thats the Boyne. I presume you can see more of the water from the Penthouse.

OK I should have spent more time stitching the three photographs together but I think you get the idea.

To be fair the view of Trim Castle from the gate of the property is probably the best view possible of the building. Still not stunning though.

More information about Trim Castle here and here.

29 December 2008

Some of the articles on the late Harold Pinter from an article in the Guardian describe him as " a contrarian". An online dictionary define the word as follows: a person who takes an opposing view, esp. one who rejects the majority opinion, as in economic matters. I have always been of the opinion that when everyone agrees on something it must be wrong.

Anyway being contrary myself I have grown to hate "The News" on television. Last night was a prime example. An item was included on a great white shark incident in Sydney Harbour. This was obviously shown only because there was some footage of the shark.

The way the Guardian reports the story today is a great example of the rubbish that passes for news nowadays. It reports that the shark "menaced" the kayakers. In fact he/she just swam around as fish are supposed to do probably wondering what these stupid people were doing in his/her element. One of the kayakers was knocked off the boat by the shark - probably by accident. This man was pulled to "safety" by fishermen who were nearby. No evidence there of any malicious intent on the part of the creature, no attack, no blood in the water.

Then the Guardian included the classic journalistic trick, referring to another unrelated incident to try to establish a non-existent pattern - "Just days earlier, a snorkeller is believed to have been snatched by a shark as he swam with his son at a beach south of Perth, off Australia's west coast." No evidence that a shark, not to mention a great white, was involved and I understand the distance from Perth to Sydney is in the region of 2037 miles (3279 km) so hardly the same shark anyway!

22 December 2008

British poet, Adrian Mitchell, has died. He always strove to be relevant and accessible and to write in clear language on topics of general interest. His statement ""Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people," from the preface to his first volume, Poems (1964), is often quoted. You can find his reading of a selection of his poems in the Poetry Archive here. The archive also has an interview with Mitchell, very interesting - "As long as the poetry's good there's room for everyone". He even mentions Dylan.

The Guardian obituary is here. The picture is from the Poetry Archive.

20 December 2008

Christmas shopping in Blanchardstown done quickly then wait in bookshop cafe with a large (I refuse to use foreign terms to describe the relative sizes of coffee cups!) coffee and a magazine Poetry London. The shop has a good selection of poetry magazines but I couldn't find any of the Irish ones.

I read Poetry London now and then, it usually has a nice mix of new poems and reviews. This issue is very good - new poems by Les Murray and Andrew Motion among others, reviews by George Szirtes and an article on the poetry of John Ashbery. I nearly attended a week's course by Szirtes and heard him read twice in Ireland this year. His blog is very interesting and is well worth keeping up with. I have been listening to some of Ashbery's poetry recently from the Penn Sound Archive.

Also this issue has the results of their poetry competition - one of the ones I didn't enter. There is also a short report by the judge Kathleen Jamie. She says that she felt that many poems came from "ideas for poems" and goes on "Where do poems come from if not from ideas? From scraps of wild energy, from images that snag in the mind, from odd phrases that cohere with those images, from . . . some agenda of their own".

18 December 2008

Sligo Picture Theatre revisited (see entry for 12 December). The postcard right shows the Picture Theatre in Sligo in the early 1920s with a modern view of the same street below. The film advertised on the billboard is Peg o' My Heart. Research reveals that the film was on show there on Thursday, Friday and Saturday 5 to 7 June 1924. The postcard picture was taken on one of those days.

Seats for the film were 5 pence, 9 pence and one shilling and three pence and for that you would also see episode two of the western serial Breaking Through. The Sligo Champion newspaper cost 2d.

The Picture Theatre had been closed for a week or two in May 1924 for redecoration. The Sligo Independent reported in early June that "The Sligo Picture Theatre is now most typically decorated and presents quite an attractive appearance reflecting not only great credit on the part of the decorators, but also on the tastes of the genial proprietors". My feeling is that the postcard was issued by Kilgannon the photographer who was also proprietor of the Picture Theatre.

Notice the coats being worn in the postcard picture. The summer of 1924 saw a lot of bad weather. In July the Sligo Champion reported that the bishop of Achonry diocese ordered that prayers for fine weather be said in all churches.

14 December 2008

Nice article on a visit to the Antarctic by Boyne Writers Group member Evan Costigan in today's Sunday Business Post. Evan has had poetry and stories published as well as travel pieces. He recently had an article on Japan published in the Irish Times.

My own dream is to visit South Georgia, the island which was so prominent in the Antarctic exploration of Ernest Shackleton. This island was the goal of the epic James Caird boat journey which Shackleton and five others, including Kerryman Tom Crean, achieved in 1916. Shackleton died in Grytviken harbour there in 1922 and was buried in the little island graveyard with the whalers.

More Shackleton information here.

12 December 2008

I just got this very interesting postcard on eBay. It has a Thomas Street scene in Sligo but has no indication of date or publisher. My interest is in the fact that the Sligo Picture Theatre appears front right.

This cinema was set up by Tadhg Kilgannon, the Sligo photographer and local historian, in late 1911 or early 1912 and continued to operate through the early decades of the last century. Kilgannon had a studio in Thomas Street and he also operated another cinema, The Pavilion Theatre, on the left further down Thomas Street.

While I was researching life in Sligo for my Civil War book I became interested in the cinemas in Sligo and I have written a series of poems based around the theatre and a ficticious daughter of Kilgannon during the Civil War.

When was the picture taken? Manipulating the image reveals that the film advertised on the billboard is "Peg o' My Heart" starring Laurette Taylor. This was released in December 1922 according to IMDb so it should have been on show in Sligo during the autumn/winter/spring 1924/5. The man with the coat has the look of someone expecting a spring shower. Few pictures survive of early Irish cinemas.

11 December 2008

Ignorance is a shocking thing, more shocking among the elderly and especially shocking among the retired. How can I have lived till now, moderately interested in film, without knowing of a Russian director called Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 - 1986) pictured left. Well now thanks to a wonderful series on Film4 called "Films To See Before You Die" I have watched my first Tarkovsky film. It is called Mirror, made in 1975. Film poster in Russian below left. The film is in Russian with English sub-titles.

"If ever a film embodied the concept of cinema as a recreation of the human thought process, Mirror is it. Not only is it Tarkovsky's masterpiece, but it is one of the high points in the development of modern cinema". It a wonderful non-narrative, stream of consciousness film which deals with memory and relationships and includes newsreel footage and contemporary scenes. The narrator hardly ever appears in the film as his relationships with his mother, his ex-wife and his son are dealt with.

The filming is striking with nature, rain, wind fire playing very important parts in the film. It's far removed from James Bond, The Magnificent Seven and even North by Northwest!

I borrowed another film, Ivan's Childhood, by the same director from Blanchardstown public library today. A very good library, lots of video and audio, including audio books. Well worth the trip up.

Another of Tarkovsky's films, Solaris (1972), is on Film4 this Saturday night 00.45am

Information abour Tarkovsky here.

8 December 2008

Watched The Merchant of Venice (2004: Director: Michael Radford) last night. This was the first Shakespeare play I ever studied - St Nathy's 1961 - and it may have been the wonderful Fr Tom Lynch who taught it then. I have never seen it on stage or screen and this film was a revelation - no modernisations, Shakespeare's own language and wonderful settings.

Pacino was great as Shylock and Jeremy Irons can play melancholy so well - Charles Ryder from Brideshead transplanted to Venice. Some of Shakespeare's comedy, but not all, has been cut and the result demonstrates why the Bard is so highly regarded. Both principals are complex and excite sympathy and antipathy at different times. Shylock has those wonderful lines -

and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? etc

Then there's the great lines when the Prince of Arragon, suitor to Portia, chooses the wrong casket and finds a fools head in it.

With one fool's head I came to woo,
But I go away with two.

Trailer here on YouTube.
Details on the Internet Movie DataBase here.

7 December 2008

Sylvia Plath's poem reminded me that I visited her grave in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire with poet Mathew Hollis two years ago.

Difficult to find, it doesn't stand out among the lines of graves. The fact that "Hughes" was included on the stone caused much anger and it has been defaced many times.

The quotation is said to come from the Bhagavid-Gita though there is some debate about this.

Wikipedia article on Sylvia here.

When there I looked at nearby gravestones and found this very interesting one. Firstly because the surname was Ireland and secondly because of the story it tells. Twenty three year old William Ireland was killed very near the end of World War 1 leaving a wife Miriam Agnes and a three year old daughter, Mary. His wife, presumably never remarried and lived to a good age.

6 December 2008

Just went out in the back garden and saw this in the clear winter sky over Trim. The Yellow Steeple is lower left.

Must resist the temptation to write a poem about it.

from Balloons by Sylvia Plath (February 1963)

And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting

The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.

Her balloons were Christmas left overs in the house but the above lines suit the picture well don't they?

5 December 2008

Dylan for Dublin 2009!

Bob Dylan has confirmed that he will play a show at The O2, Dublin (formerly The Point Depot) on Tuesday 5 May 2009. Tickets will go on sale Monday 8 December at 09:00 from Ticketmaster. This appears to be part of a European tour, full details not available yet but he is playing a number of concerts in Scandinavia at the end of March and a concert in Cardiff on 28 April. Presumably some other UK dates will be announced soon.

Dylan's last Irish concerts were 24 and 25 June 2006 at Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, and in the Marquee, Docklands, Cork. I attended both. The Cork concert was memorable because I was very close to the stage, because the crowd singalong for "Just Like A Woman" was the best I've heard live and acknowledged by Dylan and because we heard a wonderful version of "Blind Willie McTell" - the first in an Irish venue.

4 December 2008

A cartoon of me done in London 2004 by a "lightning caricaturist" artist called Picasso Griffiths, a Welshman who wasn't interested in rugby. He was employed by a computer company to sketch visitors to its stand at the annual BETT educational technology show in London to raise interest in their products. I couldn't ever figure out how that was supposed to work but it was probably more original than free pens, stress balls, posters, lollipops or even T-shirts.

The BETT show is billed as the largest of its kind in the world and I attended it regularly as an ICT Advisor, usually taking three days to see it all. I met Picasso Griffith twice and have two sketches he did. He wasn't there the last two years, free pens are probably better after all!.

His website is here.

3 December 2008

When in the west recently I stopped in the village of Craughwell, Co Galway, to look at the statue of Anthony Raftery (Antoine Ó Reachtabhra; Antoine Raiftearaí) (1779 - 1835), sometimes called the last of the great Gaelic bards. The statue crafted by sculptor, Donal O' Murhcadha, stands on the village green. The poet looks forlorn, lost, possibly just about to play his fiddle but more likely deciding to pack it in having played for those empty pockets of "Mise Raifteri’. The fact that the statue is completely covered with lichen makes things even more sad. There is actually some doubt that Raftery himself actually wrote that famous "Mise Raifteri an file" poem, see the Wikipedia entry here.

Craughwell village green also has a bust of Lady Gregory of Coole by the same sculptor.

There is an annual In Sight of Raftery festival in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo.

2 December 2008

Just got THE SHOp poetry magazine in the post. I always check these magazines to see if any of those included has also been published in our Boyne Berries. Philip Quirke from Wexford (pictured left) is one this time. He has "What the Crow Heard" in this issue:

December. Dusk. The town's fires
are kindling in grates
of tight terraced houses.

No-one can write a crow poem without the ghost of Hughes' crow peeping over his shoulder. The same is probably true of fox poems. This crow however is a much gentler being than that of Ted Hughes.

With this issue there is a letter from THE SHOp's editor saying that they are unable to pay the published poets this time becuase of failure to obtain a grant from the Arts Office of Northern Ireland. They also have been told by The Arts Council here that there will be a significant reduction in their grant for next year. Boyne Berries got a small grant form Meath County council Arts Office this year but it looks like the prospect of getting a similar grant next year is slight. THE SHOp website is here.