Journal entry, Johnny Foley’s pub, poetry reading Campbell, Boland, Tracy 10/5/00

10/5/2000 We’re gathered at Johnny Foley’s pub in San Francisco for a poetry reading with Siobhan Campbell, Eavan Borland, and Bob Tracy. Johnny Foley’s does it up right with little sandwiches, and cheese bites. When I was last here was for the Irish poetry festival Finnegan’s Awake. It’s the same crowd, the event is funded by the American Ireland fund. Bob Tracey, an eminent James Joyce scholar, is emcee, introducing what he calls the 70s wave of Irish women poets. Bob Tracy says the second book can either make or break a writer, Eavan Boland is most renowned for her second book, The War Horse, published in 1975, she has nearly 20 books under her belt. She explores themes in the Mother Ireland tradition, she explainsthat so many poems were written by men where the women became objects, incapable of speaking. She explores the permutations of the role of women and Irish national identity. She mentions how permanent wave can be a gesture of greeting, or a farewell. In Her Own Image (1980) and Night Feed (1982), explored the ordinary lives of women and the extraordinary obstacles women poets faced in a male-dominated literary world. Her poetry is liquid nitrogen. She invokes the air, Saint Brigid, and the forced silence women bear. Words draw meaning out of sound. If a prayer cannot be read aloud, is it any less of a prayer?

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!