Is there an audience in the Republic for the contemporary literature of Northern Ireland? Apparently not in Galway, anyway. And apparently not among some sections of the media, writes Fred Johnston
"Invisible Silence" was a crammed celebration of the literature of Northern Ireland held in Galway over the weekend of October 7th to 9th. It was organised by the Western Writers' Centre (of which I am founder-manager) and sponsored unhesitatingly, with encouragement and advice, by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Lottery Fund in the person of literature officer and writer Damian Smyth, with a little help from Easons Bookstores. Prose and poetry in English, Irish and Ulster-Scots was on offer, with a discussion on contemporary theatre and women's writing. The main venue was the Imperial Hotel, once temporary home to Antonin Artaud.
Among the writers and lecturers who spoke were BBC Northern Ireland radio producer Chris Spurr, in conversation with drama lecturer David Grant, on the identity and sense of Northern Irish writing culture. Poet Alan Gillis gave a spirited late-night reading. Belfast's Lyric Theatre was represented by artistic director Paula McFetridge, in conversation with playwright Jo Egan.
The Irish language reading took place in the Bold Art Gallery and featured Greagóir Ó Dúill and an t'Athair Réamonn Ó Muireaghaid, poet and author of a book on the SAS. Aoife Nic Fhearghusa, chairman of the Western Writers' Centre, handled the introductions. Of course the crazy fringe surfaced: a telephone call to my own home, bravely anonymous, of course, alleged that the Irish language reading had been switched from the Imperial Hotel as a deliberate indication of how second-rate we thought the language was (and so on and so forth). Yet notably, Irish-language radio took a keen interest in the festival.
Novelists Glenn Patterson and Carlo Gebler paired up to read; Moyra Donaldson read with Sinéad Morrissey, introduced by poet Colette Nic Aodha. Leontia Flynn had the Sunday morning reading to herself. A true highlight of the weekend was the impeccably well-mannered James Fenton, poet and lecturer in Ulster-Scots, and author of the dictionary The Hamely Tongue, who illustrated the developmental history of the language with slides as well as poems. He remarked that only someone who speaks the language consistently, not in scraps and bits, can truly lay claim to it. He has no time for any attempt at politicising it, pointing out that Ulster-Scots is not concerned with Whar daes he hing his hat on a Sunday?, and is used by Catholic and Protestant alike, having to do with location and geography rather than sectarian allegiance. The poet Medbh McGuckian gave a wonderful reading.
But as for an audience for this cultural feast, one might ask, in good Ulster-Scots, What happened ye ye wirnae there? As far as RTÉ's cultural tyros were concerned, the festival wasn't happening, in spite of a flurry of press releases over a period of weeks. No inquiries, no questions. No one from the Arts Council at Merrion Square bothered to put in a diplomatic show. Only one newspaper, a Galway freesheet, bothered to send a journalist to cover the festival; no photographers turned up. Galway's local radio arts programme also decided it wasn't worth covering, nor any of the topics on display worth exploring.
The press releases and photos were trundled out, the timetables followed after them, but general media silence was the order of the day. The Irish Times took things somewhat more seriously, to its credit, and previewed the festival in its literary column Loose Leaves on the previous Saturday, complete with colour photographs of some of the writers taking part. Village magazine and The Irish Times's cultural supplement, The Ticket, didn't mention the festival, and even the relevant listings column of The Ticket simply forgot about it.
The people of Galway seem to have decided that the term "Northern Ireland" on all those posters and flyers had some outré significance of its own. Divided into cultural camps whose internicine animosity can make North Belfast on a bad night look as threatening as a peace march by singing nuns, Galway's literati often plan their visits to poetry readings with the same attention to strategy as Julius Caesar before entering Gaul. There are always ambushes waiting in the rocks. Did this sort of thinking keep so many of them away?
Was there a slip of a different cloth showing here? Might it be that Northern Irish literary culture is so closely defined by a small handful of celebrity names that all other literary names are rendered irrelevant in their glow? Is it, perhaps, safer, more digestibly black-and-white that way? Is a display of cultural divergence among Northern Irish writers, such as that offered by the aptly-named "Invisible Silences" weekend, not quite what audiences in the Republic are ready - or willing - to accept?
Is the media-simplistic, bite-sized view of Northern culture the only view acceptable? If one wanted to know what was really going on in writing in Northern Ireland, this festival was the place to find out. It was an inspired idea, a genuine exercise in cross-border cultural co-operation and one worth repeating.
So what is one to conclude from all those empty chairs?