Putting Offaly back on the literary map

Not many people know this, but 200 years ago most of Tullamore was burnt to the ground when a hot-air balloon crashed into the army barracks soon after take-off.

"This event," continues the Offaly Arts Officer's press release, "is being commemorated by another eruption of hot air, though this time of the literary variety, at The Great Balloon Fire Literary Weekend in Tullamore from the 11th to the 13th of this month."

The arts officer in question is Sharon Mee, a woman with the wit, energy and ambition to assemble a crop of the country's leading writers for readings, workshops and musical events on a scale never before witnessed in the midlands county.

How did she do it? A little emotional blackmail, actually. "One or two weren't able to make it to last year's festival and I played on that," she says. "But we also pay them the proper rate and look after them well."

Thus was the star turn, Roddy Doyle, reeled in first and with him class literary acts like Anne Enright, Michael Coady, Dermot Healy, Rita Ann Higgins and Evelyn Conlon. Pretty much a dream team then, but given that none of them hails from Offaly, one that will doubtless trigger some local angst and heart-searching.

Sharon Mee has wrestled long and hard with it herself. "But how can you put an unpublished local guy up against a professional like Roddy Doyle?" she asks. "I know I'm in for a backlash, but I believe it's important for local writers to see professionals perform."

She is well aware that there could be a second James Joyce living under a bush in Banagher or Shannon Harbour, but the fact is that despite its associations with Trollope and at least one Bronte, Offaly isn't coming down with published writers.

Off hand, she can think of three, of whom the young playwright Marina Carr (from outside Tullamore and unable to attend, apparently) is probably the best known. But the good news is that the people of Offaly can expect to be seeing a lot more of at least one star on the Mee literary hit-list.

As a tangible gesture of support to the many fledgling writers in the county, Rita Ann Higgins is about to be appointed Offaly's writer-in-residence. She's not its first, but she will be different and guaranteed to banish for ever the image of the "writer" as a lofty, precious flower.

This is a woman who left school at 14. Since then she has published four poetry collections and three plays, given readings all over the world, been elected to Aosdana, been writer-in-residence to University College Galway and - to her astonishment - just been turned down for a place on the same college's Arts degree course; or at least she assumes so.

She recently learned through a neighbour that random selection applies, but no one has informed her one way or the other. "I'm angry about it, I can't deny that," she says, before reverting to her customary humour. "Just wait till they offer me the honorary doctorate," she threatens, "and watch me do a Sinead O'Connor on them."

But that legendary energy and spirit is Offaly's gain, and she brings with it plans to put her workshop participants on stage for public readings once a month and to be available for one-to-one meetings with those too shy at the workshops.

But watch out, Offaly: this woman is no pushover. The one thing you do not say to Rita Ann Higgins is: "I never rewrite." And a startling number of fledglings do. "But I lose total interest in them if they say that," she says. "A lot of work is unfixable and should just go in the bin. But you'd be amazed at the number of poets who keep everything under the bed and think that someday someone is going to do an Emily Dickinson on them."

So what does she think she's going to find in Offaly? "It's exciting for me because it's not a city. University cities are sceal eile because very often your students will have done all the courses and you're constantly bumping into Americans who know everything there is to know about poetry. Who knows what scholars I'll meet in Tullamore?"

With her appointment, she brings to a mighty two the number of writers-in-residence in the four midland counties of Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath. Laois already boasts the fizzing intellect and communications talents of Rita Kelly, a woman of no-nonsense views, who can hold an audience enthralled by her passion for writing but who can equally expertly slay sacred cows.

Writing, she says, is "about the interaction, the humanity, the generosity and the giving. It's about the human experience. It's about the humanity of Chaucer, Pope, Shakespeare, Dante, Austen, Keats, even Arnold, who is a wonderful poet. What it's not about is the melodramatic twaddle of the Brontes." She swears that the midlands is full of "latent energy" and that the region has got a raw deal from the literary scholars.

"There's been a sense that if you didn't come trailing clouds of western or south-western glory, you were as nothing, and yet all the great books we have have come from the midlands, The Dun Cow, The Book of Kells, even the Book of Moling from south Carlow . . ."

In place since May 1st, she loves the job and heaps praise on the Laois Arts Officer, Muireann Ni Chonaill, and on Laois County Council, "which puts its money where its mouth is and offers the writer-in-residence as a service to the community, putting it on the same footing as roads, sanitation or the fire service."

She plans to spend time in the schools, the prison and of course with the Laois Writers' Group and has already brought writers such as Carolyn Swift and Agnes Bernelle to the county, where local writers read with them on the platform.

As an example of the facilitator's role she sees for herself, she cites the community of Killinard which has produced "all this wonderful material on the history of the place . . . To see it all laid out so beautifully would do your heart good." Meanwhile, Co Longford's arts officer, Fergus Kennedy, is working towards having a writer-in-residence: "One of the difficulties we as arts officers have to get across is the fact that we are not artists ourselves. Our job is to match needs to resources and our brief includes all art forms so we couldn't possibly be experts in them all."

Nonetheless, appointments of artists-in-residence are never a foregone conclusion; nor indeed, is an arts officer. Westmeath has no arts officer and therefore no artists-in-residence either. (Neither for that matter have Kerry, Carlow or Clare, the Arts Minister's own county.) Residency posts are co-funded by the Arts Council and the county council (a split of 66 and 33 per cent, respectively, on average), and so the concept and the chosen artist must be sold to both bodies.

Also, positions must be advertised nationally, a requirement which can cost up to £1,000, not to mention the strain for a voluntary interview board of seeing as many as 40 applicants. Then there's the shock to the successful candidate of discovering that accommodation, food and travel must come out of the £210 net they make a week on average and that administrative support, if any, will be minimal. But all the signs are that they do it for the love of it, because no one, at least from the midlands anyway, whinges about it.

And whoever ends up with Fergus Kennedy in Longford is sure of an exhilarating ride. His plans are nothing if not ambitious, stemming from the influential support of the county librarian and a solid literary base that includes such established events as the Goldsmith Summer School and the Maria Edgeworth Literary Weekend, as well as active writers' groups in Granard, Longford town and Lanesboro.

He plans to put on a permanent footing the hugely successful environmental summer school and arts festival that started in Lanesboro this summer, and his next big project is nothing less than a National Youth Literary Festival.

Westmeath, meanwhile, appears to be getting off the fence at last. Although the absence of an arts officer paints a dim picture, the county is currently seeking a director to preside over the fine £1,000,000 Integrated Arts Centre due to be unveiled soon at Mullingar's County Hall.

But why no arts officer in a county bursting with artistic talent and literary associations? "It's a matter for the members to provide the resources," says the acting county secretary, George Lambden, bluntly. So are they resisting the idea? "Not really," he says loyally. "The reality is that we wanted to get this development up and running first.

"They've been supportive about the study, and the plan has been agreed and approved by them. Once the centre opens, I believe that will act as a spur to other developments. At estimates time, the issue of an arts officer will have to be considered." And from arts officers, as we know, many good things flow.