Finnegan's Awake Poetry Festival

Finnegans Awake: A Festival of Irish Writers
May 4-7, 2000
presented by the Irish Consulate in San Francisco
in association with the Irish Arts Foundation

The Consulate of Ireland, in association with The Irish Arts Foundation, presented the first major Irish literary festival in America. We were fortunate to have Kevin Conmy as our Cosulate General. He was the driving force in gathering 23 major Irish poets and bringing them to the Bay Area.

The Consul General said, "This is a significant historical moment for Ireland." He elucidated that the purpose of this event was to hear the voices of—and have conversation with—some of the most important poets in Ireland, a country for which poetry is an integral part of culture, identity, and politics.

The readings and discussions provided an opportunity for us to consider the current state of affairs in Ireland and its impact on their work as poets. The festival opened, appropriately on the real Beltaine date (May 4), and for four liminal days and night days in May, dozens of readings were held at Stanford University and at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University.

The Irish writers who attended “Finnegan’s Awake” —all are poets and novelists, some are screenwriters, and a surprising number speak Irish (I've listed them geographically—many also teach in the US).

From Northern Ireland: County Antrim: (Public Enemies), Ronan Bennett, Belfast singer, Irish-speaker, (First Language: Poems, The Star Factory) Ciarán Carson, (The Weather in Japan) Michael Longley, Glenn Patterson, Antonia Logue, Medbh McGuckian, Co. Tyrone Paul Muldoon.

The Republic: Connemara  Mary O’Malley, Co. Claire Edna O'Brien, Westmeath/Cavan (I Could Read the Sky) Dermot Healy, Tipperary Dennis O’Driscoll, Limerick Desmond O’Grady, Lancaster/Kerry (Pharaoh's Daughter) Irish speaker Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Corconian-Dubliner, Irish speaker (Rosa Mundi) Theo Dorgan, Wexford's  Katie Donovan, (The Heather Blazing) Colm Tóibín; (Crazy About Women) Paul Durcan, (The Captains and the Kings) Jennifer Johnston, Paula Meehan, Mary Morrissy, Eamon Grennan, Colum McCann, and Stanford's resident Dubliner (Object Lessons), Eavan Boland.

Our emcee and host, and driving force behind the festival, bookstore owner, Connor Howard, said that the purpose of Finnegan's Awake was to draw attention to the fact that Irish writing did not end with Joyce and Beckett. There is a renaissance of creative work in all areas of the arts in Ireland today, and especially in the literary arts for which the country is so well known. This festival brings together over twenty of Ireland's top poets and novelists—an unprecedented gathering in the United States!

EXTRA! (AT&T commercial)

EXTRA!

I came back from the fields of West Marin having spent 2 long days with a thousand others an untrained army of first-timers like myself.

Come as you are, most of us were not actors the logistics of moving us in geometric formations when we've had no formal training, never joined the army, or never stood in bread lines, is daunting.

Across the potholes, the stars arrive in a stretch limo and a woman in a pink bathrobe and curlers steps out to join the Basque herder with his sheep and all the Japanese business men bow low.

People hover like guardian angels to powder and primp them while we, AT&Ts legions of feudal peasants, the ordinary, the mundane, we are left to fend for ourselves against the elements.

My lip doubled in size from windburn and a spiderbite. It looks like I’m wearing a lip plug.

As we stood in countless formation, conversation wandered from boundary to boundary.

The young woman Shauna, who'd beaten childhood cancer and won, was fey and could see my well-dressed wounds

Santa Claus (you’d recognize him from the magazines and catalogues) limps from a bad car accident down the Grapevine. Those having survived near death experiences shed a different light, a homing beacon to others, tribe within tribe.

As the camera crew aligns us for the nth take, the ‘copter again swoops up the valley like a large mosquito. In this setting, conversation takes on epic proportions and people's lives become poignant when they’re reduced to five-minute fragments shaped by location and group consciousness.

Despite the fact that we are doing a commercial for cell phones where we are too far away from civilization for the real cell phones to work, we reach out and touch the Basque farmer (really some guy from Tomales). 

The idea being one small planet.

Cards and stories swapped like a swap meet, or stockbrokers we had transcended the mundaneness that is the death of art, and the prize was the sky and wind.

Journal entry, AT&T commercial shoot, Chileno Valley 5/3/00

5/3/2000 We are at the L. Ray Jacobson Ranch on Chileno Valley Road for an AT&T shoot. What are the chances, it’s a place I’ve been to before, a raucous party with Jayne McPhearson. I didn’t know anyone there, and I had a right miserable time while Jayne gadded about. I’m waiting by the roadside, standing in the dirt, pondering the fact that I may have inadvertently crossed a picket line. And we all wait in the dust while the cows watch on. Two herds. Make that three, there are sheep. A motley crowd, many of us were hired before AFTRA/SAG decided to picket the event. We’ve all been bussed here from San Francisco, and we have nowhere else to go. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Ironic, as I am closer to home here than anywhere else, via backroads. Tomorrow I will drive here from Forestville. I stand in line, waiting for instructions. Ranchers from Tomales arrive. Bill Crane owns a café in Tomales, we have people in common. Andy is a carpenter in West Marin. These are people I know. Intersecting lives. We make vast formations in the field, near the site of my car accident, on the other side of the ridge. Action, roll. We march in geometric formation up the rise, and trample on the nests of ground-dwelling birds. Killing their young. The meadow birds fly in front of us, keening for their young. The roar from the fake fog machines is deafening. The air is laden with diesel fuel. I feel I am living between worlds. We’re all extras here.

Journal entry, casting call AT&T commercial

5/2/2000  Something must finally be working as I got a call back from Bo Bonneau casting studio for an AT&T commercial which landed me my first job as an extra, along with about 1000 other lemmings. Without Neil’s help, I might add. We will relentlessly march through the hills of an undisclosed location, a ranch in Marin County, we will be bussed in in droves, and we will march, seeking stellar telephone experience—with a herd of sheep. Real sheep. Not cattle. I kid you not. What does that say about us? The hours are long, and the pay is terrible, but it’s better than no income at all. I get a little buzz when I see the meager checks from Burbank Studio, etc. Don’t quit your day job has never been more true.