This year’s Irish literature event at Tuesday, which was part of the St Patrick’s Festival Birmingham Fringe, was as Kent Davis described – ‘great little event that we can build for the future’. It was a lovely, cosy gathering around the The Old Crown’s fireside, with people reading pieces of Irish poetry and prose that meant something to them. The choices were varied.
There were the classics – a brilliantly theatrical reading of Jonathan Swift’s satirical A Meditation Upon A Broomstick and a touching rendition of W B Yeats’ The Isle of Innisfree.
Of course you can’t get through a night of Irish literature without a bit of James Joyce and James Kennedy was brave enough to read us an extract from Ulysses.
John Kennedy, who compered the evening’s proceedings, gave us Seamus Heaney’s heartbreaking poem Mid Term Break.
I dug out my Patrick McCabe books – my favorite Irish author of deathly dark, ‘bog gothic’ novels. I read an extract from Winterwood, which Deirdre O’Bryrne had gotten me musing upon after her recent talk about fathers in Irish literature at February’s Irish Heritage evening.
We also got a taste of some lesser known authors, including some as yet unpublished works – Brummie performance poet Brendan Higgins of Wrote Under gave us his reflections on the Perils of Drinking and The Sounds of Birmingham.
Kent Davis saw this first event as the start of something special, with readings from new writers and higher-profile authors, so keep an eye on what emerges for next year’s festival.
As great as that is, there’s a lot to be said for intimate gatherings of small groups sharing their favourite reads and their thoughts and feelings about them, and I’m sure I heard whisperings about an Irish literature book group as I was leaving. A grand plan – sign me up!
