“Fiche Bliain ag Fás is a book that is full of light, you feel the sun is shining… and everyone likes one another, and there’s dancing, and there’s music, and there’s singing, and there’s joy – you get the sense of people, you know, skipping around.”
So wrote writer and critic Alan Titley of Muiris O’Sullivan’s classic memoir, translated as Twenty Years A-Growing. It’s a work that celebrates another world, a Gaelic world, the world of the Blasket Islands.
The act of going there might be called an iomramh – or imram. This word evokes a voyage to a magical world. And when in 2004, almost 20 years ago, I decided to create an Irish-language literature festival, it was poet Gabriel Rosenstock who suggested we name it IMRAM. The word was perfect. We wanted to stage a festival that brought the audience to the beautiful world of literature in Irish.
How did I end up founding IMRAM? Although I had Irish, and although I was a reader, for most of my life up to my late 30s I knew little about literature in Irish. My father had Blasket memoirs and Donegal novels by Séamas Ó Grianna on his bookshelves. I didn’t read them. For a punk teenager in 1970s Belfast who was in thrall to the dystopian science fiction of JG Ballard, they had little allure. I would discover their magic later.
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Mac Lochlainn was writing about my home – west Belfast. I recognised myself and my city in his poems. Here were the soldiers, the helicopters, the sirens, the half-bricks, the plastic bullets and the Molotov cocktails
In 2003, I found myself accompanying my partner Niamh Lawlor as she toured a puppet show in Donegal. We popped into the Oideas Gael bookshop in Glencolmcille one day. I bought a couple of poetry collections by Cathal Ó Searcaigh – and Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues, by Gearóid Mac Lochlainn. This book opened my mind to modern literature in Irish. Mac Lochlainn was writing about my home – west Belfast. I recognised myself and my city in his poems. Here were the soldiers, the helicopters, the sirens, the half-bricks, the plastic bullets and the Molotov cocktails.
I learnt that some of the most engaged and innovative, writing from Ireland was in Irish. I devoured Daithí Ó Muirí's themed collections of surrealist short stories, Cogaí (Wars) and Uaigheanna (Graves); Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s haunted poems of merfolk and psychic dislocation; Celia de Fréine’s personal poems of the hepatitis C scandal; Alan Titley’s politically charged parables in Leabhar Nora Ní Anluain; and so much more.
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I then wanted to hear these writers reading their work; I wanted to meet them, talk to them, get them to sign copies of their books. I had 20 years of experience in book publicity, organising author tours and poetry readings. I thought it might be fun to stage an Irish-language literature festival.
There’s a saying in Irish, ‘má tá cearc agat, ba cheart duit a bheith i lár an aonaigh’ – ‘if you have a chicken, you should be at the heart of the market’. We reckoned we had a first-class chicken to sell
There was the idea of the festival, then there was the challenge of how to fund it and create it. Luckily, my friend Theo Dorgan introduced me to then Poetry Ireland director Joe Woods, who agreed to invest a few thousand in IMRAM and to set up a bank account under Poetry Ireland’s auspices. One day we called around to Grogan’s Castle Lounge (then, as still, Dublin’s most-loved watering hole for poets, painters and writers) for a pint, where owner Tommy Smith wrote a cheque for €1,000 without hesitation.
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Joe also introduced me to Jack Gilligan, arts officer with Dublin City Council, who also encouraged us to apply for funding. Shortly after, I got a phone call from Róisín Ní Mhianáin, the then Irish-language literature adviser to the Arts Council and a board member of Bord na Leabhar Gaeilge, who suggested we apply for a small festivals grant. Within a few months, we had €12,000, enough to get the show on the road.
Then there was the vision. There’s a saying in Irish, “má tá cearc agat, ba cheart duit a bheith i lár an aonaigh” – “if you have a chicken, you should be at the heart of the market”. We reckoned we had a first-class chicken to sell, with plenty of meat on the bones. We formed a board or working group that included poets Gabriel Rosenstock and Colette Nic Aodha, and Jane O’Hanlon of Poetry Ireland Education.
We wanted to make sure our events were at the heart of Dublin’s cultural life, and the city’s nightlife. We booked venues such as The Sugar Club and popular bars such as Sin É and The Cobblestone. We wanted to mix up music and poetry. So we had poets Cathal Ó Searcaigh and Áine Ní Ghlinn on the same stage as rhythm and blues band Galvian Junction; and Gearóid Mac Lochlainn reading poems about Traveller culture with piper Jarlath Henderson.
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IMRAM rapidly developed its multicultural and multimedia vision in the years that followed. In 2009, we staged the first of our flagship music shows, with The Dylan Project featuring singers Liam Ó Maonlaí of The Hothouse Flowers and Caoimhín Mac Giolla Catháin of reggae band Bréag, and musical wizard Steve Cooney on guitar. In its second staging we invited artist Margaret Lonergan to create stunning on-screen images featuring the lyrics in Irish. Over the years we have produced Irish language concerts of work by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, The Pogues, Edith Piaf, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Kate Bush and others. These shows always sell out, and give us a potent publicity vehicle.
I still have an indelible memory of Tómas Mac Síomóin in Crawdaddy nightclub in 2009, delivering a stunning rap version of Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s work in Irish, with sax, drum and bass backing
IMRAM is also about creating new work and bringing artists in different disciplines together. We have asked writers to respond to themes as varied as Dublin at night; the aisling; islands; and forgotten sounds. We have invited puppeteers, sound sculptors, visual artists, jazz composers, traditional singers, and dancers to take part in these multimedia shows. A highlight this year is Rabhadh gan Ghníomh/Alarmed and Inactive, an exploration of the theme of climate emergency, curated by composer Úna Monghan. This bilingual performance will fuse traditional and experimental music and visuals with poetry and prose by Nandi Jola, Nithy Kasa, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Daithí Ó Muirí and Róisín Sheehy.
We engage with literature in other languages – with events that have featured other minority languages such as Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Welsh; we have translated poetry from Russian, Spanish, German, and Japanese. I still have an indelible memory of Tómas Mac Síomóin in Crawdaddy nightclub in 2009, delivering a stunning rap version of Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s work in Irish, with sax, drum and bass backing. But we never lose sight of the living literature of the Gaeltacht, and have showcased writers such as Micheál Ó Conghaile, Dairena Ní Chinnéide, Danny Sheehy, Máire Dinny Wren, Proinsias Mac an Bhaird, and many others. During the pandemic, writer and broadcaster Cathal Póirteir curated and presented two online films with gala performances of poetry and music from Corca Dhuibhne and Gaoth Dobhair.
IMRAM 2023 sees a programme of innovative events that are as cutting-edge as ever. In Lost Moon Sisters, Dairena Ní Chinnéide embarks on a remarkable dialogue with the late radical feminist poet Diane di Prima, speaking to her spirit from west Kerry in a litany evoking the personae of the wolf goddess and the warrior woman. Her poems will be read to music composed by Nick Roth, with vocals from Olesya Zdorovetska and on-screen imagery by Margaret Lonergan.
Guth na hÉigse is a Poetry Speaking Competition for Post-Primary Schools, based on the successful and well-established Poetry Aloud poetry speaking competition initiated by the National Library of Ireland and Poetry Ireland in 2007. It aims to encourage students throughout the island of Ireland to commit Irish language poems to memory and then speak the poems aloud at heats, regional finals and at the national final that takes place in Smock Alley.
Ó Cuirrín’s Dracula is a dramatic reading of poet Seán Ó Cuirrín’s famed Irish translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. incorporating visuals by Mags Mulvey and a dark soundtrack composed by Muiris Ó Fiannachta. Geimhreadh Anama/The Winterreise Project is Caitríona O’Leary’s stunning reworking of the Franz Schubert classic in a full and traditional music format. In Emain Ablach, composer Neil Ó Lochlainn showcases new work in collaboration with fifteen musicians that draws on early Irish writing and myth, with newly commissioned poems by Aifric MacAodha.
Twenty years on, IMRAM invites all those who love literature in Irish to travel with us to a literary world where the words are full of singing and joy. Bímis ag iomramh! Let us voyage!
IMRAM Féile Litríochta Gaeilge/Irish-language Literature Festival takes place from October 18th-21st and November 11th-18th. Full programme at imram.ie
