The Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, hosts ‘The Art of Reading’ Podcast in Cashel Library.
Maura Barrett, Cashel Library, Reports: –
The ‘Art of Reading’ is a monthly book club hosted by Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction. It is available to library book clubs across the country and offered as an online event for readers and booklovers everywhere on the last Thursday of every month.
Since February, the Laureate has met a different library book club each month to discuss a novel by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
In November 2022, Colm Tóibín comes to the bookclubs in Cashel Library, where he will record live his podcast that will be aired live on the last Thursday in the month, through the Arts Council website and social media
The selected titles include new work by contemporary Irish writers as well as novels from the past, that the Laureate wishes to bring to a new generation of readers.
Readers, book lovers and book clubs everywhere are invited to join in the Art of Reading with the Laureate, to read these outstanding books and to engage in reading in a deep and focused way.
The Poet Laureate will discuss Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Last September’ with noted Cork Novelist and Poet Thomas McCarthy, before opening the discussion out to the Book Clubs.
Note: There are a limited number of spaces available to interested readers for this event and early booking is advised. Please contact Maura Barrett in Cashel Library on Tel: 062 63825, to secure a place at this event.
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. Between 2006 and 2013 he was a member of the Irish Arts Council. He has twice been Visiting Stein Writer at Stanford University and has also been a visiting writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He taught at Princeton from 2009 to 2011 and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2011. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Chancellor of Liverpool University. He is President of Listowel Writers Week and a member of the Board of Druid Theatre. His second collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His book of essays on Henry James ‘All a Novelist Needs’, appeared also in 2010. Also, in 2012, his novel ‘The Testament of Mary’ was published and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, ‘The Testament of Mary’ opened on Broadway, with Fiona Shaw, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. In 2013 it was released as an audiobook with Meryl Streep. Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Nora Webster’, published in 2014, won the Hawthornden Prize. His ‘On Elizabeth Bishop’, published in 2015, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His ninth novel ‘House of Names’ appeared in 2017. In May 2017, he co-curated ‘Henry James and American Painting’ at the Morgan Library.
By Scottish Novelist, Essayist, Poet and Travel Writer Robert Louis Stevenson. (1850 – 1894).
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow, Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow, For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see, I’d think shame to stick to nursie, as that shadow sticks to me.
One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup, But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
by L. M. McCraith (Possibly written and published around 1912)
River Suir, south of the ‘Swinging Gates’ Thurles Town, Co. Tipperary. Pic: George Willoughby
The Song of the Suir If you hear the river sing in youth’s sweet spring, When primrose gold is all you seek, the primrose gold that fairies fling, In this Old Land, the Ever Young, hear when the fresh cheek flushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You can hear it at high noon in sunny June, While swallows skim, and salmon leap, or underneath the lover’s moon, When you picture loved one’s blushes, and hear through songs of thrushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You may hear it in the fall recalling all – Old scenes, old friends, old ways, old days, old hopes come back at its soft call, Just an echo! Yet the yearning for it sweets the heart in gushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
You shall hear it through the cold when you are old, Though storm and stress and winter frost and chill that comes from greed of gold. Shall hear, who heard it long ago, till death your heaving hushes – The ripple of the river through the rushes.
Lyrics by Sandy Mason Theoret and recorded by American country music artist Crystal Gayleyoungersister of the late Loretta Lynn, who sadly passed away yesterday.
I could have a mansion that is higher than the trees. I could have all the gifts I want and never ask please. I could fly to Paris, oh, it’s at my beck and call. Why do I go through life with nothing at all? But when I dream, I dream of you. Maybe someday you will come true. I can be the singer or the clown in every room. I can even call someone to take me to the moon. I can put my makeup on and drive the men insane. I can go to bed alone and never know his name. But when I dream, I dream of you. Maybe someday you will come true. But when I dream, I dream of you. Maybe someday you will come true.
Between Corrib and the sea, In the ever-changing Indian Summer light-scape, Stands the stony walls of Connemara, Solemn, ancient testament to a past simplicity. Beneath the twelve ancient pins, Like sentinels over the bleak terrain, Battered by Atlantic’s waves.
See the leathery faces of the men, Who put to sea in currach’s. And the mellow, sensuous skin of Gaelic speaking girls. My heart flies, As if returning home, To some beautiful beginnings, On this cool evening of summer.
A Gaeltacht girl, Waist deep in the Traigh Mhor* waves, Making towards the silver sand, Startling the sea gulls on surf-whited rocks. The girl breasts the Atlantic, Defiant like all her race, Of the furies of the dangerous farraige*.
There’s a white spot near the Burren of Clare, And it’s called Black Head. Where the great liners of sad and hungry years paused, Before engulfing The Gaelic speaking men and women, Who sought a world beyond the horizon, Worthy of their steel.
The canvas-covered haycocks stand, Black from the rain of the West, The great rocks abroad at sea, near shore, Are washed by the evening sun, Light orange and shaded, Against the backdrop of the distant coast of Clare, And the stroinseiri gallda*.
Calm, the sea, And on the shore old women stroll, And praise the tranquillity, That ennobles their age. There’s little but Nature here, And thoughts are clear and pure and strangely simple, In their surging beauty and innocence.
Later, as dusk soft steals upon us, on a sand dune, Near a dead, stone walled open fireplace, Broken bottles of ale. Some passions were powerful here. It is a land here starkly sensuous, Where muscle and brain, bone and flesh are at one, With the ever-present sea, and who knows – eternity?
I am loth to leave this place, And envy them in the white washed cottages, By the walled-in haggard, And a derelict stony house from long ago. Where is an Gaeilge now? An old man on a bicycle swore to me, “It buys little enough here or in London”.
Where is the tongue of courage, That by peat fires sang, The songs of the Gaelic soul, In a lilting, lifting swell of Gaelic emotion? Where the pride of the Western World? Conquerors of the sea and their own fears and tears, Níl cainníocht agus cáilíocht mar an gcéanna*, We are not the same as goodness.
I weep for the strong and laughing men now gone, And strangely beautiful women and the slight to nature of an affluent age, The mockery of the rich and the spurning of an ancient pride, Too late, moan. Forever gone, That splendid spirit of those who lived, Between Corrib and the sea.
END
*Traigh Mhor – Local cove area near An Spidéal– translated from the Irish meaning “big beach”). *farraige – translated from the Irish meaning “sea”. *stroinseiri gallda – translated from the Irish meaning “foreign strangers”. *Níl cainníocht agus cáilíocht mar an gcéanna – translated from the Irish meaning “Quantity and quality are not the same”.
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
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