Ireland and Poetry

Hello, Again after a very long time. We are traveling again — YAY! Ireland for 12 days, I for poetry workshop with my friend Judyth Hill, Laird for enjoyment — though not like mine isn’t enjoyable. Our friend, Ramona, is also making the trip. We flew on Labor Day, overnight from Dallas; easy trip and I got to watch Guardians of the Galaxy (very funny); a short Irish film, An Irish Goodbye:

“Northern Ireland film An Irish Goodbye won best live-action short film at Sunday night’s ceremony. The film is a black comedy set on a rural farm in Glenmornan, a small hamlet west of County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. It follows two brothers, Turlough and Lorcan, who are estranged.”

And another one was Australian, Blue Back, made in 2022:

“Follows Abby, a child who befriends a magnificent wild blue groper while diving. When Abby realizes that the fish is under threat, she takes inspiration from her activist Mum, Dora, and takes on poachers to save her friend.” Did you know that grouper are very large and they live to be in their 70s (assuming they aren’t caught and eaten). A lovely, sweet movie.

Not like flying to South Africa, which takes 6-7 movies and a TV show, so that if you fly there and back in one month, you’re sucking hind teat for entertainment on the way back.

All worth watching if you can find them.

We finally got to our hotel after a comedy of errors with the address. We are staying at the Pembroke Town House on Pembroke Road. And we came to the right street but we had wrong number, so couldn’t find it; taxi took us to Pembroke House on Pembroke Street. Those people were very confused because they are not a hotel. They figured it out, called us another taxi and we returned to Pembroke road. I want to point out that practically every building in Dublin has many outside stairs to get to the front door. That meant two trips up lots of those stairs and one trip down, lugging luggage.

First order of business after then lugging luggage to our room, find an old pub and have fish and chips and a Guinness (well, Laird and Ramona; I had Irish gin with tonic) — so off we went, found the place Ramona wanted to go to. They were very happy with their stouts, but we all were disappointed with the fish and chips — Ramona and I left most of ours; Laird soldiered on.

On Wednesday, before meeting the writers, we went around Dublin on the Hop-on Hop-off, had lunch at a nice restaurant (yum, local salmon in a poke bowl for me; Laird with a weird looking open-faced shrimp sandwich), then hopped back on to get us as near as possible to our hotel (which was not really very near) and walked back. After meeting with writers (there are 4 of us), we had wine and cheese with everyone — there is a couple originally from Arizona, who now live in San Miguel de Allende — who are with Laird and Ramona as nonwriters with Kris Rudolph, logistics star and culinary queen — we went to dinner at Brazen Head, Dublin’s oldest pub; someone said it started in the 1100s (could that really be true?!?).

Today, Laird’s group toured to various sites near the Liffey River, incl. Trinity university with a historian. The relationship of Cat O’Conner to the English/Protestant overlords is very similar to the current attitude of the Afrikaners to the Brits in South Africa. The Brits did not get humanitarian awards for their behavior in Ireland (or SA). We heard a lot from Cat about Wolf Tone and the 1798 rebellion and an equal lot about Michael Collins and the 1916 revolt. Collins signed the peace treaty of 1921 that made the republic of Ireland a dominion of the UK — somewhat far less of the self governing and independent nation the native Irish desired. The republic was not declared until 1949 — about the same time that India finally achieved complete independence. Grievance runs very, very deep. I had expected to visit and see the Book of Kells at Trinity and had printed out 24 of the most interesting illuminated pages from the website. However, we admired the buildings and were on our way, never to have seen the Book of Kells. Another tidbit of info. Power(s) is a very Irish surname. There was a ???? Power in the Laird family genealogy who arrived in the American colony within 50 years of the Mayflower. If this arrival was from Ireland, not directly from England, that could be the Irish connection. There is an Irish emigration museum, but one of our group visited and was disappointed. We decided that there might be better sources to one day explicate and inform this speculation. In any event, Cat confirmed my speculation that there were a bunch of Scottish Presbyterians who were recruited by Cromwell and allowed to immigrate to Ireland to help control (and oppress) the native Catholic (pejoratively — “”papist) population. Ramona and I also visited the National Museum of Ireland: Archeology Museum and were equally impressed as was Jonelle (below).

Lots of immigrants in service roles — we had a Ukrainian taxi driver and most of the staff at the hotel are not native Irish.

Back to Jonelle: We writers did a literary walking tour — our guide, Jack, was amazing. The tour included places and writings of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and WB Yeats (he called him Willie; I’m going to too) — and we ducked into the archaeological museum to see the bog bodies, kings who had failed to bring good weather for good harvest so were tortured (their nipples were cut off — it’s kinda a long story) and killed and thrown into the bogs. Apparently, bogs are a good medium for mummification. We all regrouped for delicious lunch at Davy Byrne’s, AKA Joyce’s pub. I came home and Laird and Ramona went to the archaeological museum to see the bog bodies and more.

Tomorrow we leave for county Kildare to tour Drimnagh castle, visit St. Brigid’s cathedral and spend the night at Kilronan castle. Dinner will be at Douglas Hyde restaurant, the 2022 2nd place winner in Ireland’s gold medal awards for fine hotel dining. Yum.

I’m reading the Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (good book, I recommend it; set in Croatia) — here is a joke from it (I’m paraphrasing): a woman goes to a fortune teller, who tells her that she will be a widow within the year, her husband meeting a violent death. The woman is shaken. She gasps, clutches her heart and asks “Will I be acquitted?” Easy enough to find funny books (this one is not), but not too many tell jokes. It made me laugh.

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