Collaboration the name of the game for poet, piper and artist

Date Published: {J}

Anybody who loves books will realise that Connemara’s Cló Iar Chonnacht (CIC) is among the finest publishers in Ireland – if not the finest. But, as a person whose Irish is fairly basic, it’s frustrating to know that the content of these beautifully produced books is normally inaccessible because CIC specialises in Irish language writing.

However, the company’s latest book, Agus Rud Eile De/And Another Thing transcends that difficulty.

This collection of poetry from Louis de Paor has translations by Biddy Jenkinson, Kevin Anderson and Mary O’Donoghue. The book is illustrated by artist Kathleen Furey and includes a CD, featuring 11 of the poems set to original music by piper and composer Ronan Browne.

This version of Agus Rud Eile De is a new approach to a collection that was first published in 2002 and won the Oireachtas Prize for for Best Poetry collection in 2003.

Cork born Louis, who is Director for the Centre for Irish Studies at NUIG, is one of the leading poets writing in Irish today and has won many awards for his work.

However, this collection had been out of print for some time, so when it came to producing a new edition, there was space to do it differently, he says.

Most of the poems were written over a decade ago and this project offered Louis a fresh glimpse of the subjects that preoccupied him then, especially when he read the translations.

“There are lots of fathers throughout the poems; fathers; grandfathers; fathers and sons; fathers and daughters. These poems are written from the position of a man on the verge of middle age who realises that death is neither incidental or accidental.

“It’s also about the fragility of young people from the perspective of middle age and how they don’t realise it.”

The chance to revisit the original opened up opportunities to collaborate with other artists, but the whole thing came together in a way that was even better than Louis had imagined.

Kathleen’s Furey had illustrated the cover of a previous book he’d written and when he saw a painting of hers in the City Museum a while back, he felt it would be ideal for this collection.

The publishers then suggested using more of her images throughout the book. Louis discovered that the images in question were Kathleen’s response to death and loss, which fitted perfectly, “because the poems really deal with these issues”.

The poems are rich in emotion and imagery and it’s great to be able to read them in English and in Irish before listening to the CD. This consists of 11 works from the book with music composed by Ronan Browne, a former member of the Afro Celt Sound System, and an accomplished musician across many genres.

The project came about after Ronan and Louis took part in an Arts in Action concert at NUI Galway last year. They really enjoyed it and when they learned that they lived so close to each other – Louis is in Oughterard, Ronan in Spiddal – they decided to give collaboration a go.

The resulting CD is beautiful, albeit in a ‘weird’ way, to use Louis’s own word.

“I’ve always tried to present poems in a different way, and to integrate them with music” he explains. He did that previously when he was studying and working in Australia, collaborating with Greek, Aboriginal and Irish musicians.

He and Ronan started “bouncing ideas off each other” last summer.

“Ronan is very sympathetic, he has very good Irish and he is sufficiently confident in his own abilities not to feel uncomfortable doing things that people normally wouldn’t expect him to do,” explains Louis, who selected the poems for the CD. He picked those which he remained curious about 10 years after writing them.

“Also the poems for the recording represented certain themes which were strong in the book, so that the story of the book would be represented on the CD.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.