EVERYONE who has ever stayed at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghma kerrig will have their own memories of the place. The stories of a period of residency at the big house near the surreally-named village of Newbliss in Co Monaghan are as different as the people who tell them.
I was lucky enough to grow up with Annaghmakerrig. It was formally opened in October 1981, when I was 16. I read about the opening in the paper and saw the names of the centre's directors, Bernard and Mary Loughlin, for the first time. I kept the newspaper clipping; so intriguing was the story of this big house with such big possibilities in a drumlindotted county which I had never visited. I wanted to go there.
And since I was 19, I have gone there, every few years. Sometimes I hitched there cross-country, other times, got the famous Sillans bus to Cootehill, and taxied the last few pot-holed miles. Years passed between my visits, but even to know Annaghmakerrig was there, waiting serenely beside the glittering lake was enough.
And each time I returned, it was like a kind of homecoming. Any house, no matter how historical or comfortable or beautiful, is only a shell without the people who breathe life into it. Bernard and Mary, as resident directors, along with their children Maeve and Eoin, had that gift in abundance for transforming a vast estate into someplace that felt like home.
On the first day of each new arrival, it was always peculiar to see the big house full of people who hadn't been there the last time: a bit like arriving at a familiar theatre where the play and cast had changed in your absence and you'd walked in half-way through the performance. But Bernard and Mary were always there as a constant grounding presence, mediators between the life elsewhere you'd temporarily taken refuge from, and the ever-changing theatre of life at Annaghmakerrig.
"Annaghmakerrig has become an artwork in its own right, an eccentric omphalos among the drumlins of south Ulster with a mythology and a magic all of its own, born out of its peculiar history and the many new stories, poems, plays, paintings and other works of art that have been produced here in the last two decades," Bernard said this week, in a characteristically expansive sentence.
It can't have been easy living out two decades of your family life just a couple of steps away from a houseful of ever-changing assorted artists, but the obvious affection between Bernard and Mary and their children was always clear. They complemented each other in a rare balancing of talents. Bernard dealt with the logistics of all the visiting artists, set up exchanges with other arts centres around the world, and a myriad of other things.
Mary looked after the running of the house with tact and grace and introduced residents from all over the world to sublime cookery in the famous meal at seven each evening. For weeks after every departure, I experienced strange pangs at 7 p.m., around the time the brass gong would call us to feast and talk at the long table in the kitchen with artists from all disciplines. Some of the best meals of my life were eaten around that Annaghmakerrig table, and some of my closest friends today are people I originally met there.
OVER the years, I watched Annaghmakerrig growing and was proud to feel even such a small part of what it was about: both of my books were partially written there. I saw the stables and outhouses being renovated into apartments, studios built, surrounding land bought back. And on each visit, Bernard's hard-won reclaimed garden, which he loved so much, had expanded along another bank or walkway like the gradual opening of some exotic and beautiful flower.
Bernard gained quite a reputation for his unique sense of deadpan humour, which defies the ignominy of definition. Everyone has a Bernard story, but my own favourite encounter with this was the time some feckless residents committed the sin of parking their cars in front of the library.
They and I had come back from a long night in the Black Kesh, the local pub, and not bothered to drive down to the car park some distance from the house. In the morning, the view of the lake from the library table was thus obscured. By the time the house straggled down to breakfast, Bernard, who missed nothing, had left a little note on the kitchen table. It read: Please park in the carpark. Poets must be able to see the f****** lake at all times.
And now, after 18 years as directors of Annaghmakerrig, Bernard and Mary are leaving to set up their own arts centre, El Refugi Irlandes, in association with El Centre d'Art i Natura in the Catalan Pyrenees. Among other roles, Bernard will also act as development consultant to Annaghmak errig for three years. Mary will work as an interior designer, conservator and culinary expert both here and in Spain.
Annaghmakerrig is still there, of course; the Tyrone Guthrie Centre will go on into its third decade with new directors. But Bernard and Mary will always remain part of Annaghmakerrig's history, infused into the spirit of the place and the collective memories of all who have ever spent a night under its extraordinary roof.
There are hundreds of ex-residents who may share some of the sentiments of this tribute, whether here on the solid earth or in the arcane heavens. Among them are: John Jordan, Leland Bardwell, Dermot Seymour, Verena Pavoni, Joe O'Connor, Colm Toibin, Mary Lavin, Bernard Farrell, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, James Simmons, Sam McAughtry, Deirdre Purcell, Liam O Maonlai, Maurice Craig, Martin Lynch, Tom Murphy, Breandan O hEithir, John O'Conor, Dermot Bolger, Elgy Gillespie, Paul Durcan, Theo Dorgan, Dermot Healy, Mary O'Malley, Helen Comerford, Nell McCafferty, Eilis Dillon, Vivien Mercier, Stewart Parker, Anne Devlin, Sebastian Barry, Padraig Murphy, and Louis Lentin.
Yet although each of their tributes would be different, in one sense they would all essentially be the same. They would all record how much Bernard and Mary will be missed and how we wish them only joy, and luck, and strong muscles to negotiate the steep hills of their new home; the second-highest village in the Catalan Pyrenees.
From mid-March, Bernard and Mary Loughlin can be contacted at El Refugi Irlandes, Can Felip, Farrera de Pallars, Pallars Sobira, Lleida 25595, Catalunya, Spain.