It's more than 40 years since Richard Murphy wrote 'Theodore Roethke at Inishbofin', with its unforgettable end lines: "A storm shot up, his glass cracked in a gale:/ An abstract thunder of darkness deafened/ The listeners he'd once given roses, now hail./ He'd burst the lyric barrier: logic ended./ Doctors were called , and he agreed to sail." Now, all these decades later, the background to the poem is to be told in Murphy's autobiography, The Kick . To be published by Granta Books next year, the part containing the Roethke episode is extracted in the latest issue of Granta magazine, no 75, the theme and title of which is Brief Encounters. Murphy reveals how, living in the only hotel on Inishbofin off the Galway coast in 1960, he decided to invite Roethke to stay on the island and sail in Murphy's boat, hoping that the American poet might help him find a US publisher. Roethke came, thirsting for both alcohol and praise.When Murphy mentioned a Robert Lowell poem favourably, Roethke banged the counter in the pub and said; "Why are you always praising Lowell? I'm as mad as he is." Things deteriorated and Roethke's wife sent for a doctor who signed a certificate of insanity, committing her husband as a voluntary patient to the County Mental Hospital in Ballinasloe. Roethke leaving Bofin in tears, accompanied by a priest, was, writes Murphy, the saddest sight of his years on the island. When the American returned, he was drinking less and praised the treatment he got in Ballinasloe - which he called the Bughouse - as better than his experience at the most expensive private clinics in America. His psychiatrist had allowed him out to drink in a pub frequented by male nurses who kept an eye on him. He now wanted to gain an Irish reputation that rivalled Yeats's, asking Murphy, who was typing his new work, "Don't you think I've got Yeats licked?" Three years later, Roethke was dead, having had a heart attack in a swimming pool on an island in Puget Sound.
Roll on the rest of the memoir if it's as lively as this.
The same Granta issue (£8.99 UK) also includes new fiction from Anne Enright and an extract from John McGahern's forthcoming novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, to be published early next year by Faber.
The Laois literati, a force to be reckoned with now in the capital, were out in force at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin on Monday night for the launch of the programme for the first Laois Arts Festival. In fact, buoyant after their county's victory last Sunday in the women's All-Ireland football final in Croke Park, Laois men and women from all walks of life were to hand to help rectify what John Fingleton of the Competition Authority in his launch speech called "the under-appreciated quality" of the midland county. Music, visual arts, film, children's events, theatre and a prison programme are all part of the line up for October 24-31st but Sadbh was inevitably honing in on the literary events. On Saturday, October 27th, writers Eoin McNamee, Philip Casey, Claire Keegan and Martin Malone will be reading in the Dunamaise Arts Centre, while in a similar event on the 29th - the bank holiday Monday - the writers will be Joseph O'Connor, Jamie O'Neill, James Ryan, and Mary O'Donnell, with Seamus Hosey threading the evening together.
The organisers want to make this the tip-top arts festival in the midlands and are hell-bent on accessibility as well as excellence. With arts festivals now ubiquitous around the country, the best way - the really meaningful way - in which festivals can prove their worth is by pulling in as many people as possible. There is nothing sadder than sitting, as Sadbh has done, with a handful of people in a hall listening to wonderful readings and wondering what went wrong; why wasn't the place packed to the gills to hear such riches? With a standing army of Laois folk behind this festival, such a dismal scenario is unlikely to unfold. Phone 0502-63355 for details or check out the website at www.laoisartsfestival.com
Speaking of festivals, Clifden Community Arts Week finished up on Sunday and Sadbh was thrilled to make it to one of the highlights on Saturday night. The venue was the magnificent Church of Ireland church up on the hill overlooking the town. In a coupling that might have seemed unlikely but proved inspired, Aidan Matthews read his poetry in between performances from the Dromore Diocesan Youth Choir, who specialise in sacred music. Uplifting is the only word to describe it.
.