Magic Midsummer Writers night
It was a night of gentle 'E's, the Midsummer Night's Reading event organised by the Kilcullen Writing Group. Eclectic, Elegant, and Enjoyable.
And if there wasn't a full house in the Town Hall Theatre to hear the writers from four mid-Kildare groups reading their work, it was those who didn't come to fill the empty seats who missed out.
Short stories, poems, memoirs and travelogue, there was nothing pretentious or arty about the mix. But there was plenty of fun and consequent laughter, leavened a little by pathos and the perception that the small and ordinary things about life are often the most important.
It was the second such event organised by Kilcullen, hosting in this instance the Clane Writers Group, along with the Bower and Harbour groups from Naas.
There were award winners among those who read, but in truth all who took to the stage for their respective groups could be judged equally good if judgement was happening. But it wasn't a night of judgement, just enjoyment and the pleasure of many differences.
From Clane, Eileen Keane's usual gentle and wry delivery entertained in two pieces inspired by her computer itself. One told of a writer interacting with a recalcitrant character on the screen, the other played cleverly on the possible parallels between computer and human memory. Eileen excels at using herself as a canvas on which to paint endearingly shortcomings that are universal to us all.
From the same group, Frances Cline mixed a couple of children's tales together with modern times to provide a heady cocktail with a sting in the tail for a debauched teddy bears picnic. Josie Devine on the other hand reached into her youth for an inspired teenage rite of passage piece based on 'In the Mood' and her very humorous attempts to catch the notice of a band member. Marie Gallagher's 'Zookie's' tale of cohabitation with a blunt male instrument and her attempts to find out what made him tick was deftly drawn, while Lilian Webb's essay from an Antarctic adventure cruise gave us insights into the ups and downs of 'shared facilities' and rocking bunks.
A recollection from a cooking class when he was a boy was the main ingredient of Liam Power's opening piece from the Bower group. From the same bunch Gina McMahon's 'Going Home' at first seemed an ordinary tale of a chance meeting on a park bench, but subtly dragged us all into the 'Twilight Zone' before she finished. Julia Reynolds told a curious story, 'Locked Out', of a middle child sent to live with another family and finding on her eventual return that there was nobody there for her.
From the Harbour writers, Margaret Scott D'Arcy offered a brace of quite delightful poems, one about her thoughts coming home from her honeymoon, the other wondering what had she let herself into on the birth of her first child? Poetry was also the medium chosen by her Harbour colleague Maria Murphy to explore her envy of birds gathering to fly away for the winter in 'Cleared for Takeoff', and some thoughts on reincarnation with 'Are You Sure I haven't Heard You Before?'
For Kilcullen, Mary Barber managed once again to make the ordinary interesting in her humorous discourse about the 'warfare' that takes place in a family kitchen around mealtime. Emma Foley's 'A Midsummer Night's Awakening' was a lush, savage and magical account of two lovers meeting over a drink, and John Martin provided a pair of poems, 'Mincing her Words' on phrases and maxims in everyday use, the other -- the title of which I don't recall -- relating to a report that Elvis had been seen working in a butchers in Newbridge and bringing into it many of the titles of 'The King's classics.
Finally, Sylvia Hickey's memoir of 'The Dando', otherwise the Dandelion Market, was yet another of her intriguing recollections from her very interesting life -- the line to remember is that when they closed it, 'they took away a piece of what made Dublin special'.
All in all, this latest initiative from Kilcullen Writing Group was itself another very special occasion. And the other nice thing about it is that there's a promise of more in the autumn.
