When you live in a place for a long time it can be easy to take it for granted and to stop noticing what is incredible about your town. I hope that the West Cork Literary Festival, presented in July this year, never becomes an event that fades into the background or that we forget to be excited about. Because this Festival, which celebrates writers, writing and the written word brings us bestselling authors, new novelists, and literary specialists to talk about their work, to chat with readers and even sign autographs. These are writers that have made a mark on our lives and our culture: Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), David Nicholls (One Day), Paul Lynch (Prophet Song), Miriam Gargoyles, MAN Booker Prize Winner Anne Enright and the legendary Colm Toibin.
And all of this right where the N71 meets the Atlantic Ocean in our own corner of the world.
Being in the room with writers talking about their writing is inspiring. Every event I went to was either sold out or close to, and at the event with Colm Tóibín, there were over 300 people or 10 per cent of Bantry’s entire population, all sitting together in the ballroom of the Maritime Hotel. This is the equivalent of 22,000 people at an event in Cork City – and that only happens for sports and Bruce Springsteen! Clearly this Festival has captured an audience of literary fans, including me – and incidentally, thanks to the Festival, I discovered that the first floor ballroom balcony is a wonderful location from which to capture the beauty of Bantry as the sun lowers into golden hour.
My Festival experience started in a packed Marino church to hear from Caleb Azumah Nelson, a young award-winning London-based writer whose first person narrative writing style perfectly fit the small, crowded and intimate venue. Azumah Nelson read from his second book, ‘Small Worlds’, quietly, with a rhythm that is intrinsic to the work with its close relationship to music. It is interesting that music influences his writing so much because the two art forms are diametrically opposed in how we enjoy them: the musician needs to physically perform their work in order for it to be enjoyed whereas the writer is almost passive in the interaction we have with their books.
But here in a former Methodist church in a small market town on the Western edge of Ireland Azumah’s reading transported us to the heat, noise and intensity of summer in South London. With words, written and spoken, Azumah Nelson illuminated the feelings of being simultaneously one thing and another – in his case a Londoner and a Ghanaian and a working class boy who won a scholarship to study at a private school. It is a sensation shared by many of us who have our feet in two different places.
Irish writers Cathy Sweeney and Sinéad Gleeson shared the stage at the Maritime Hotel with host, fellow author, Colin Barrett. The space is more expansive than the Marino Church and feels grander with its wooden dance floor, chandeliers and heavy curtains. The setting stands in contrast to Sweeney’s debut novel ‘Breakdown’, which again is a first person narrative but told from the perspective of a married woman and mother in Dublin, who decides one morning to just drive away from her family. Sweeney’s reading gave extra layers of emotion and understanding. She talked about how writing a full-length novel had taught her to believe in her own creative process rather than trying to hit preconceived marks and measures. This is also one of the messages of her book about the difference between doing what is ‘right’ and what is right for you.
The biggest of the big names this year was Irish writer Colm Toibin who has published 11 bestsellers including Brooklyn, which was adapted by Nick Hornby into a movie starring Saoirse Ronan. Toibin was here to talk about his latest novel, ‘Long Island’, a sequel to ‘Brooklyn’ (despite Toibin claiming he dislikes sequels). Host Sinéad Gleeson was incisive with her questions with an understanding of what the audience wanted the writer to tell us. There was theatre in Toibin’s reading of ‘Long Island’ as he became the people that he writes about and knows.There was a sense of ‘Under Milk Wood’ in the tone of the small town characters with complex lives and desires.
When we watch a movie and then read the book the characters’ appearances become defined and, in a similar way, when he reads his work Toibin’s becomes the voice that we are searching to hear when we read his books. Was he onstage for an hour or did he speak for fifteen minutes? We don’t know because the time spent in his world passes at a different speed to time outside. But surely this is how enjoying books should be: something to transport us from life’s mundanity.
We need to take notice of the West Cork Literary Festival every year and never allow it to become just another event, just another symbol of time passing because it brings a world of creativity and art that has the power to inspire and change lives.
