A culture Night with drama but no stress

When the idea was suggested to John Martin to have a retrospective of his writings over 40 years for Culture Night, he decided it could be too stressful, writes Brian Byrne.

"Too much stress on the audience," he clarified. "So I went back to The Beatles and decided it could be done with a little help from my friends."

Which made last night's event in Kilcullen Library really magical. Much of John's writing output over those decades has been for the spoken word in one way or another, and his friends from Kilcullen Drama Group did him proud as the evening's 'reading panel'.

It was a full house event too, with many coming early to ensure places. Even then, a number had to be dispatched to the Parish Centre to gather more seating capacity.

In her introduction, Librarian Julie O'Donoghue described John as a true Renaissance Man, noting that she had gone to a real reference book to make sure she had the definition right ("no Googling"). "My dictionary described it as 'one who excels across a diverse range of areas, who is curious and creative, artistic and sociable', and that about sums up the man we have come here tonight to celebrate."

Describing his cultural output as 'truly astonishing', Julie listed poetry, plays, short stories, contributions to Sunday Miscellany, "and something I knew nothing about — painting." A number of John's paintings were on display in the Library for the evening.

"Everyone knows about John, we have all bumped up against him in some way or another," she continued. "But there's something very special about him. It's not just his own culture and his own abilities, but his contribution to culture in the town ... which is incalculable. He is a very generous teacher and he has worked very hard to enable other people to access culture in their own way, whatever their abilities."

And so, 'how do you follow that?' the subject of the evening wondered as he took to the podium, before 'with a little help from my friends' we all enjoyed 90 minutes of a truly amazing variety of spoken entertainment.

The pieces ranged from wry to witty to gritty to poignant. Always with a point, if not necessarily a neatly tied ending ("that's one of the nice things about writing, you don't always have to reach a conclusion").

Some topics came from personal experience, like his 'Taxing Times' trips on the merry-go-round of trying to contact the LPT department in Revenue to make a change in bank account details. Or "definitely not me", the 'Second Best' fictional account of a relationship based on a self-help book where the author missed out on a particularly important piece of advice.

'Head Shot' was a short story against the background of gangland violence, while 'Afternoon Tea' and 'Inseparable' were both examples of flash fiction, limited to 300 words and 50 words respectively. He trod potentially dangerous ground with 'Alice', a story of a woman's mid-life crisis. Double-hander sketches included 'Stasis' about two men in a nursing home, and 'Mother in Law' underpinned by the dreaded words "we need to talk". His 'Powerful Words' brought us behind the imaginary scenes of teaching Queen Elizabeth those "cupla focal" which were such a key element of her state visit.

There were poems based on the so-called Great War — 'The Truth', 'Remembrance', and 'False Dawn' — which were pithy observations on that brutality. There was the whimsical coming together of a pair of nursery rhyme characters, and the first-hand account from Noah 'The Boat-builder' of a well-known Old Testament story.

There were songs as Gaeilge from Monica Martin and Maurice O'Mahony. The 'friends' who provided the essential helping hands through a magical evening were Wayne, Eilis, Maurice, Siobhan, Gerry, Vivian, Esther, and Dick. And the one who is no longer here, Bernard Berney, "who would definitely have been with us, and moreover, would have gone home with my script to make adjustments ..."

An hour and a half never passed so quickly.

(All the night's photos are here.)

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