West Cork Literary Festival
by Miriam Logan--
Last year, in 2018, the Cork Non-Fiction Writers hosted an open mic event at the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry; the feedback was good and an invitation to do it again this year was extended to us.
Along with Marie and Musetta, I volunteered for a role. Although my task was on the face of it a minor one, it opened me to a facet of the festival that was new, richly textured and somehow affirming both the diversity of our human stories and the oneness of our experiences.
Facilitating the session, Marie was sitting with the readers; Musetta and I, with bell and notebook, took charge of timing and calling each writer in turn.
Musetta and myself stayed close to the entrance and, as writers indicated their wish to read, we took their names and explained our plan. We would allow 3 minutes for each reading with an opportunity, time permitting, to have a second go around.
Our first writer John was an American veteran. Forty years previously, his need to find a quiet retreat where he could heal from the traumatic experiences of the Vietnam war had led him to Bantry. Now, by some magical weaving in the intervening years, he has published a book on how friendship is better than war and how art has potential to heal.
Pam who is a poet was next up, giving us a moving account of soothing her daughter and staying present through the suffering of a painful situation.
Ruth read a story about her experience as a child in the back seat of her parents’ car, crossing between the north and south of Ireland. The sense of danger was palpable in the story and in it, a poignant question is put by her younger self to her parents: "What did we do wrong?" Leaving the question hanging gave a reverberating quality to the narrative; it raised the issue of how, in civil war, the discernment of innocence and guilt becomes confusing.
Al gave us his poem inspired by a song by Nick Cave.
He was followed by another poet, Teresa, who had travelled from Portugal where she now lives. Her poem was a lament for her sister who had been tragically killed 35 years previously. The bargaining phase of grief was resonant in the poem's question;
"Could her death have been prevented?"
Kerry gave a rendering of her writing in Gaelic, a language she has mastered and delivers with love.
Deirdre had us laughing with her darkly vain musings about interviewing her undertaker and her instructions to the make-up artist who would put the final touches on her corpse telling him: "Smokey shades of eye shadow don't suit me".
However before any of this could happen, she would be rendered beautiful by the wasting of disease and enjoy a doomed but delicious affair with an attentive lover in Paris!
Andrea read from her memoir about a time when recuperating from an operation, telling us how she had managed to get her much loved pet smuggled into her hospital room; then, how officialdom gave way to heart, when the attendant, guessing the dog was snuggled beneath the blankets, turned around to leave the room saying: "I can't know this".
Mary read her piece while I was fielding late-comers; however, I overheard the nice applause that followed.
Sally, although finding herself ambivalent about reading, got to her feet and gave us her view of the difficulties that attend consumerism.
Janet from U.K. brought us to a timely close with her piece on plants and nature. This, with its ecological slant, rounded off what was an evening of engaging encounters with writers and their labours.
In less than two hours, we journeyed in linguistics and the contagion of emotions; we shared existential anxiety and the redeeming power of sharing our humanity.
The evening affirmed my conviction that art has the potential to symbolically create an opportunity for complex conversations. By giving time and space to expressing and listening to one another, we can learn to be more attuned to our humanity.
I found myself thinking of the lines of a poem by the Persian poet Rumi who, centuries ago, understood the power of art; how it entreats us to suspend our own worry and hurry, so that we may engage, grow and evolve our civility:
"Out, beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field;
l will meet you there."
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