IMRAM on film: Ovid and Rilke as Gaeilge plus Seosamh Mac Grianna and more

“Chanfadh m’anam de shíor de chlaochlaithe” (“My soul would eternally sing of changes”) – so says Ovid as rendered into Irish by poet Caitríona Ní Chléirchín in Leabhar na nAthruithe, in which IMRAM and Poetry Ireland broadcast five short films based on stories from Metamorphoses, his masterful weaving of mythological stories dealing change and transformation in all its aspects.

The greatest change for all literary festival programmers this year, of course, was how best to deal with the challenge of staging events in the middle of a pandemic. IMRAM has opted to eschew the Zoom event route, instead opting to invest in producing high-quality films.

Our Ovid show was originally conceived as possibly taking place in the glass houses in the Botanic Gardens – but reimagined as a film project it fuses acting from Cathal Póirtéir with music from Síle Denvir and Thomas Johnston, and shadow puppets by Niamh Lawlor.

What is quite astonishing about Ovid’s stories is how many of them have themes of environmental destruction and hubris that resonate as much with the events of 2020 as any event from the ancient world. When Phaethon takes the reins of the sun’s chariot and lays waste to the world, one cannot help but think of the arrogance and incompetence of a Trump, Johnson or Bolsonaro.

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Duino Elegies is Rainer Maria Rilke’s visionary exploration of life and death. Written when the poet was a guest at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea, the elegies face death and grief head on, but celebrate the life force in a vibrant cast of lovers, angels, mothers and fathers.

Marbhnaí Duino is a series of films featuring five elegies translated into Irish by acclaimed poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi. They are read with great sensitivity by poet Dairena Ni Chinnéide to music by Seán MacErlaine, and images from Margaret Lonergan, drawing on archive photographs of the poet and his circle of friends and lovers.

For many Irish speakers, a visit to the Gaeltacht is an important part of the year’s calendar, a voyage made difficult and frequently impossible in lockdown. In our two Dánta Duibhneacha films, we take our audience to Corca Dhuibhne, celebrating the remarkably vibrant poetry, song and music of the area.

In these two performances, filmed in the beautiful stone chapel of An Díseart, with its famed Harry Clarke stained glass windows, broadcaster and writer Cathal Póirtéir introduces musicians such as accordion player Breanndán Ó Beaglaioch (Brendan Begley) and singers Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh and Éilís Ní Chinnéide.

The poets include Bríd Ní Mhóráin, Peadar Ó hUallaigh (winner of the 2010 Rupert and Eithne Strong award for his debut collection Tír Tairngre) – and Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, author of Agallamh sa Cheo, a tour-de-force of a book, a complex weave of some 70 poems inspired by the landscape of Choc Bhréannainn (Mount Brandon).

This is a polyphonic work, with Ní Bheildiúin drawing material from family members, strangers, farmers, climbers and pilgrims that she meets on the mountain. There’s the gorgeous simplicity of Thar Imeall na Léarscáile, where a climber’s monologue takes us into the concerns of their world as they worry about how many tablets they should take; when their next scan is; and wonder about when their daughter will come home from America.

In ‘La ar nós Aon Lá Eile, a woman tells the story of her husband simply walking out of her life one day. In another poem, a man brings his uncle’s ashes to scatter on the mountain’s peak. Ní Bheildiúin also recounts bloody conflicts going back through the generations, from the time of the Tuatha Dé Danaan to Lord Gray’s merciless slaughter of the local population in 1580, to the bitter divisions of the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War.

The literature of the Gaeltacht is also at the heart of Mo Bhagáiste, a bilingual drama by Pól Ó Gallachóir based on Seosamh Mac Grianna’s seminal autiobiographical novel Mo Bhealach Féin. A native of Rann na Feirste, a Gaeltacht area steeped in Irish culture and history, Mac Grianna was an astonishingly gifted writer whose genius was cut short by mental illness.

This drama deals with the challenges faced by an Irish artist struggling to be understood in an English-speaking world. In association with the Museum of Literature Ireland, we’ll also present What way…what road?, a special podcast talk on the life and work of Mac Grianna by Mícheál Ó hAodha who has recently translated Mo Bhealach Féin into English as This Road of Mine, just published by Lilliput Press.

Trees, runes and alphabets are at the heart of two themed poetry films. In The Gaelic Garden of The Dead, MacGillivray – the Highland name of the extraordinary poet, artist and singer Kirsten Norrie – takes us on a voyage into arboreal myth, magic and folklore in Scottish Gaelic culture. This film features MacGillivray reciting poetry in English and songs in Scottish Gaelic to musical backdrops composed and performed by Séan Mac Erlaine.

Richard Berengarten’s poem Crann (Tree) is a symphonic hymn to a tree in all its aspects, drawing on its sacred and central place in the world’s mythology, history and religion. Composer Nick Roth has created a new setting of Gabriel Rosenstock’s Irish translation of the text as a choral work for three voices, directed by Laura Hilliard and featuring singers Michelle O’Rourke, Caitríona O’Leary and Olesya Zdorovetska.

Crann will bring IMRAM’s online festival to a joyous and hopeful conclusion, a healing poem for us in a year of grief – “crann an ghrá, crann an chirt, bogha ceatha daonna, faoi bhláth” (tree of love, tree of justice, rainbow tree, blossoming).

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