The most surprising places to discover are usually those you least expect to visit.
When journeying to the west, I had often noticed the wide streets of Strokestown, the town built up around Strokestown Park House. I had admired the beautiful Gothic archway that leads to the fine Palladian house and was interested to hear about the grand notions of the second Lord Hartland, who had wanted to make his village thoroughfare wider than the Ringstrasse in Vienna. I knew also that in the stable yards of the vast estate there was a famine museum with extensive papers written by the tenants of the Pakenham Mahon family of the 1840s.
But I had never actually stopped in Strokestown.
All this changed a few years ago, when my husband was invited to be one of the judges of the International Poetry Prize of Strokestown's well established poetry festival. There are also two other categories in the poetry competition - one for a prize in Scots Gaelic, Irish or Manx and another for humorous political or topical satire in verse - but it is the International Poetry Prize which offers the heftiest award (this year the winner will receive €4,000), attracting well over 3,000 entries each year.
Merrily Harpur, writer and main instigator of the festival and competition, has always insisted that, unlike other poetry competitions, Strokestown should have no filtering system and that "each judge must read every single poem, be it handwritten or typed". As a result, our city house was soon stacked high with poems. The postman became a familiar figure in our hallway. The dog nestled into mountains of padded envelopes under the stairs, in the bathroom, beneath the kitchen sink. Our home filled with the imaginary narratives that found their way through our letter-box - escaped zoo animals, the birth of a daughter, a dying horse, jackdaws at dawn - so that I thought I heard the floorboards creak with the weight of the poems, started to see the walls bulge with lyrical weight. At night I felt we slept under a duvet of villanelles, sonnets, scribbled rhymes brushing like goose feathers against our cheeks.
And then one day it all ended. A winner was chosen and we were leaving the city behind, on our way to Strokestown and the poetry festival. There I found a town enthused by the power of words.
Pat Compton, chairman of the festival committee and witty MC at all the events, says the area has always had a history of rhyme. Until a few decades ago pieces of paper would often be found dropped at a roadside "bearing an anonymous poem satirising say, a lady's look, or someone who had dishonestly acquired someone else's land". Festival director and poet Paddy Bushe, whose great-grandfather once lived in Strokestown, also feels that the town itself is the essence of the festival. "The mixture of pub and repossessed big house, and the friendly intimacy of a small, untouristy town is magic. So is the reception that poets and poetry gets."
As a result, although many of the main events are held in the magnificent Park House, some of the best fun is to be had in the Pub Poetry section of the festival, held in each of the town's 11 pubs. A dedicated group of locals also always attends the workshop which poet James Harpur runs on the shortlisted poems.
I began to like Strokestown a lot - so much so, that I often go back to visit. I like to sit in the walled gardens of the house - the herbaceous border is the longest in Ireland and England - and find peace among the formal rose garden, the wild flowers, the pergola and the fernery. And I have found in Strokestown and the tranquil lakes and land around a rural idyll.
Most weekends now we travel there to an old cottage by a lake surrounded by high golden reeds. An abundance of birds claims the hedgerows, foxes and badgers have made their own the marshy fields all about and at night, bats swoop over the sycamore trees. We know we are lucky to have found such a place.
And this May bank holiday weekend we will go into the town to take part in the poetry festival ourselves and enjoy the readings by Séamus Heaney, Paula Meehan, Theo Dorgan, Maura Dooley, Greg Delanty and others.
Afterwards, we will enjoy pints in some of the many Strokestown pubs. And if our energies persist, we might even rise early the next day to climb Sliabh Bán with the poets - an ashplant, the magical token given to all winners, firmly held in their hands.
For further information visit www.strokestownpoetryprize.com, telephone 066 9474123 or e-mail: pbushe@eircom.net.
Enda Wyley is a poet.