Powerful readings from Brian Turner and Sunny Jacobs, star turns from Ian McEwan, and a touching moment between Paul Durcan and Claribel Alegría made for a fabulous Cúirt festival, writes Sorcha Hamilton.
'I have a woman crying in my ear at night," says poet Brian Turner, a former US soldier. In one of the most provocative readings at this year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Turner described the horrors of the ongoing Iraq war. In passionate, coarse and often disturbing language, Turner read from his collection of poetry Here, Bullet: "If a body is what you want; Then here is bone and gristle and flesh."
Describing the shattered concrete and blood in the aftermath of a bombing that killed 16 Iraqi policemen, he turned to the audience, counting out 16 people: "It's like all you there - gone." While his poetry is testament to the futility of war, Turner shuns any sort of heroics: "I don't know if soldiers have the right to heal . . . it is a luxury to heal."
War, exile and imprisonment were just some of the themes at this increasingly international festival, which featured a host of poets and authors from around the globe - Mexico, South Africa, Latvia, Spain and Lebanon, among others - and Ireland. Mexican poet Myriam Moscona displayed tortillas with poetry. Derry author Liam Browne described a night in Galway's famous Tigh Neachtain's bar. Lebanese author Hoda Barakat read in Arabic from her rich, sometimes dreamlike work.
Best-selling author Joseph O'Connor read from his powerful tale about the emigrant experience in his eagerly awaited new novel, Redemption Falls. Another highlight was poet Claribel Alegría, who has been a major voice in the struggle for liberation in El Salvador. Reading in English and Spanish, her rolling rs, the fiery rise and fall of her voice and the passion of her poetry received whoops and cheers from the crowd.
Gags about the Galway water crisis filtered into just about every event, however. At the launch of the festival, the managing director of the Galway Arts Centre, Tomás Hardiman, joked about "Galway BC - before cryptosporidium". When author MJ Hyland took to the stage at the Town Hall on the opening night, she took a photo of the audience: "Say . . . bad water." When a talk by author Tariq Ali was postponed due to a stomach bug, we were quickly assured it was nothing to do with the water (he was in Italy). When poet Denis O'Driscoll began his reading he couldn't help but quote WH Auden: "Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."
The festival opened with a full house, headlining with Booker winner Ian McEwan. There was an excited hush in the Town Hall as McEwan took to the stage, where he recalled the last time he visited in the 1970s, "when Galway was just one pub". There were many laughs as McEwan read with a gentle, easy command from the opening passages of his new novel, On Chesil Beach, which describes the awkward, somewhat tragic wedding night of a young 1960s couple.
MJ Hyland, whose novel Carry Me Downwas on the 2006 Man Booker prize shortlist, also featured on the opening night. While she may have felt somewhat overshadowed by McEwan, Hyland's presence on stage was a much more chatty affair. She read three short excerpts, one from a work in progress, and talked about her "miserable" life as a lawyer, and a passion for rats: "I think there should be a rat in every novel." She also worried out loud about stage nerves: "I get a runny nose in front of an audience - last night I had bad wind."
Life behind bars, from both guilty and innocent perspectives, made for a powerful and thought-provoking afternoon session featuring authors Sunny Jacobs and Erwin James. A standing ovation was given to Jacobs, who spent 17 years in a US jail for a crime she did not commit.
Giggling when she first appeared on stage, Jacobs later struggled to hold back tears as she told her story. Jacobs read from her new book, Stolen Time, which describes how her young children were taken away from her; the letters she wrote to her husband, who was executed on the false testimony of the man who committed the crimes; and how her voice became "deeper, more gravelly" after years in solitary confinement.
Jacobs now lives in Galway, where she is determined to "compensate with a beautiful life now" for her tragic past. While many, if not all members of the audience were moved to tears, the injustice of her story will undoubtedly linger for a long time among those present.
Erwin James told a different story of jail life. He felt a sense of relief when he received a life sentence in 1984. While he led a "brutal" life before jail, James studied extensively inside and later wrote a weekly column for the Guardian. "I was guilty - I met others who were not," he told the audience at Cúirt. "In a way it was easier being guilty," said James, who read from his book A Life Inside: A Prisoner's Notebook. Describing many of the mad and dangerous characters he met in jail, James gave a fascinating insight into the hardships and "primitive hierarchies" behind bars. "But I'm not making excuses for people in prison who are guilty," he said.
"You're not boring us," someone shouted out to poet Denis O'Driscoll, who wondered during a lunchtime reading if he was going on too long. He sympathised with those who had to rush back to work - "I've been there," he said. During a lively and humorous reading, O'Driscoll demonstrated his great talent for capturing the wonders of everyday life. He read from a selection of poems including Someone, which he wrote standing up cooking lunch. Most memorable, perhaps, was a poem describing a simple misunderstanding: "You are in the Super Valu supermarket/expecting to meet me at 6.15./I am in the Extra Valu supermarket/expecting to meet you at 6.15./Danny Boy is calling you down special-offer aisles./Johann Strauss is waltzing me down special-offer aisles."
Author and poet Louis de Paor took to the stage with a intriguing contemplation on language and translation. "The world is greater than any one language to contain it," he said. Introducing Armagh poet and human rights champion Raymond Murray and Mexican poet Francisco Segovia, de Paor explained how works realised in languages other than our own invite us into a "different world", one that has a different context and reality once translated into English.
Listening to Segovia read was a rare pleasure, the soothing tone and pace of his Mexican Spanish rolling out over the audience, the illusory, sometimes sparse poetry translated into English for the audience to read simultaneously. Raymond Murray read a selection of poetry in Irish and English, one telling the heart-breaking story of rushing through a "labyrinth of fears and silences" to the scene of a UVF bombing, where he anointed two young victims.
Poetry also leaked into the busy corridors of University College Hospital for the launch of the Poems for Patience project. As patients, doctors and nurses wandered past, author Michael Gorman explained to the small crowd how the project aimed to bring poetry into the foreboding, often worrisome environment of hospital waiting rooms.
Tribute was paid to Mai Ghoussoub, the celebrated Lebanese artist who had been scheduled to attend the festival but died suddenly earlier this year. On display at the Galway Arts Centre was Lebanon - Image in all the People, a fascinating photography project which offers a vision of the war in Lebanon through the eyes of those living there.
Conceived by Ghoussoub and artist Souheil Sleiman, the collection depicts ordinary life in the midst of chaos: groups of friends, arm in arm, smiling into the sunshine with a pile of rubble in the background; a child crying furiously in the night; a busy shopping street with groups of girls with trendy sunglasses and shopping bags.
Latin America had a strong presence at Cúirt. Author and journalist Michael McCaughan opened a lively debate about everything from Lula in Brazil to Mexico's Zapatista movement and the prospects for Cuba as Castro's reign nears an end. He also described some of his own experiences in Venezuela, where he was kicked out of a hotel for showing interest in Hugo Chávez. The festival ended on a high note with the celebrated Pakistani essayist, novelist and cultural commentator Tariq Ali, who linked occupation and resistance in Latin America to the Arab world. A production of Tejas Verdes, a play by Fermín Cabal about the disappearance of a young woman during the early Pinochet years in Chile, also ran throughout the festival.
Apart from Colm Tóibín, Damon Galgut and John Lanchester, who read from his fascinating memoir which mixes family psychoanalysis with novelistic skill, Cúirt also offered exhibitions in photography and a collection of art by Joe Boske and Tom Mathews. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis made a surprise appearance for the screening of The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which was introduced by his wife and director Rebecca Miller.
While last year Chuck Palahniuk added a more radical dynamic to the festival, this year the programme was somewhat weak on elements to attract younger readers. Where it excelled, however, was the intimate, open environment of the festival where fans mingled easily with authors and poets over pints in the pub.
The most touching moment at the festival was an exchange between Paul Durcan and poet Claribel Alegría. Sharing a stage, their readings worked as a touching tribute to the first time they met, 20 years ago, at a literary festival in Rotterdam. Alegría recited a Spanish translation of Durcan's love poem Nessa; when Durcan took to the stage, he turned to her, in the wings. "Claribel," he said, in a hushed voiced, and, reciting Nessa: "She took me by the index finger:/And dropped me in her well;/And that was a whirlpool, that was a whirlpool;/And I very nearly drowned."
