More than 30 people attended a reading by the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh in his home town of Gort an Choirce, Co Donegal on Saturday night, in this the final weekend of the Earagail Arts Festival.

Ó Searcaigh read from Light on Distant Hills, a memoir of his childhood and his first work of English prose, which is to be published next month, interspersed with poetry in Irish. The only allusion to the controversy caused by the documentary Fairytale of Kathmandu, which raised questions about his relationships with young men in Nepal, was Ó Searcaigh's dedication of a piece of work to some friends "who have been with me through the wars, so to say".

At Maggie Dan's, Ó Searcaigh was on familiar ground. The walls of the adjoining restaurant are adorned with pictures of the local poet, and the first page of its menu - illustrated with a drawing of Ó Searcaigh on his bicycle - proclaims it his "cultural home". Nine years ago, the theatre was named after him.

Ó Searcaigh has made few public appearances since the Fairytalecontroversy, but this was his second performance in Gort an Choirce in as many weeks. He relaxed as the evening passed, his knack for a startling turn of phrase drawing admiring echoes and an occasional laugh from an audience made up of acquaintances and some tourists.

Some of those present suggested people in the area had a deeper understanding of the man and the

controversy, one man suggesting "there's an awful lot more to the story than has come out". Another remarked that "he wouldn't have been attacked any worse if he had murdered someone".