HOME AGAIN

I am back home now and restored to the bosom of the Internet.  9 days
and 3000 miles have separated me from the furious last day of Soundeye
but my reports shall have their finale.

MATTHEW GEDEN, CARLOS BLACKBURN, KUBA MOKROSINSKI, FERGAL GAYNOR

Matthew's reading had been postponed from the day before to
accommodate TNWK so I was doubly looking forward to this.  The venue
had also been shifted to the Cork Caucus HQ on Evergreen Street as an
African Mass is held in the Christian Brothers' gymnasium on Sundays
and would drown out the readings.  Matthew has held the Festival in
the palm of his hand all week – with Trevor, he is co-founder –now
comes the time for him to burst into poetry.  It has been touching, so
many times a day – and this is evident in Peter and Keith's photos of
the event too – to see so many men and women step forward with their
books to read their poetry.  At one point Matthew reads from a tiny
wire-bound notebook.  I loved Matthew's poem in praise of Cork!  "Sing
Cork!  Its railway and its culture!"

Carlos had sustained an injury to his eye shortly before the Festival
and consequently missed most of it.  As silence is a concept I am
trying to grasp, I particularly appreciated Carlos's reading, which
was very measured.  I felt there was loads and loads of space and
silence around Carlos's words and I liked that.  Here are some of the
things I think Carlos said:

"It's so good up there that you wonder if you're not thinking it."

"I'll miss you doll.
*You know* I will."

"Half-asleep in bed
I too play a part
In the Revolution."

"That's what's scary:
Being unintegrated."

Here's an entire poem:

My Mother

I can't turn it on.
I can't turn it off.
It takes no commands.

Here's a title I liked:

How You Hurry

Carlos read some dictionary poems, poems made from the words on a
dictionary page, each titled according to its page number.  The first
one was "978."  He also read "709" and "111."  He concluded his
reading with one of a series of "Portraits":  "I was commissioned to
write portraits of people in a mental hospital in Edinburgh."  Someone
had the idea that the fat files kept on long-term patients in the
hospital did not in fact describe them.  I thought this idea in itself
was pure poetry.  Maybe even harder to make poetry from such an idea. 
The portrait Carlos read was "Flower."  Here are some extracts,
according to my notes:

"She has a helmet on & seems to be intent on how she feels."

"Her parents brought her there when she was 7 years old."

"To knit is to float above it all.
Knitting is a place."

"Will I be driving her today?
Regretfully, no.
I cannot take her glee to the next level."

Mark Weiss had been bursting with pride all week about Carlos.  I
thought this was a wonderful reading.

Kuba was next.  Now we had been waiting all week for Kuba.  I think,
as the week progressed, the audience got tougher.  The Sunday morning
slot was not an easy one.  Kuba started by saying he had figured out
his role in the Festival as "this Trojan horse. Some kind of Trojan
horse let into the Festival and then the Festival goes down in
flames."  I think the first poem Kuba read was about a frame of glass
exactly the same size as what is framed so that it can hardly be
called a frame at all.  The second poem was "Painting the Bathtub." 
Kuba said he wrote "fake poetry," which imitates very faithfully and
closely true poetry.  Some other poems were, "His Dog Looking for a
Quiet Place to Die" and "The Rent," which I particularly liked.  "We
will have a couple of songs now," said Kuba, always an announcement to
brighten my spirits.  But then he launched "Song of Prime Hatred,"
based on Lorca's "A Writer's Song," I think, with the refrain, "I will
buy a gun today / I will buy a great big gun …."  The last words of
Kuba's reading were, I think: "But I got fucked off / & stuck the
tongue out."

CORK CAUCUS

Fergal is a phenomenon.  I met him 2 years ago in Cork but much seems
to have changed since then.  I reckon he finished his PhD but he is
fully charged at the moment by the Cork Caucus: "an extended project
that began in late 2004 and culminates in a major interdisciplinary
meeting of Irish and international artists, writers, philosophers and
other creative individuals from June 20th-July 11th 2005 …. Through a
range of activities in and around Cork City, Cork Caucus will provide
ways in which the ambition of art to intervene in social life and
political thinking can be debated at this particular moment of
apparent political stasis."  The idea came from two workshops in Seoul
in 2002 and Indonesia 2003, "which brought together groups from Asia
and Europe with the intention of sparking collaborations or bilateral
initiatives ...  Another key precedent for Cork Caucus is Joseph
Beuys' bid to establish the Free International University in Ireland
in the 1970s."

The Caucus had a temporary space on Evergreen Street: it seemed
permanent to me, a visitor.  Another school, moonlighting for the
arts.  I don't know how much of it is Fergal, but the space seemed
infused with fun, inquiry, parody, bravado, seriousness, daring, joy,
argument, attentiveness, bizarreness, occupation, use.  The Caucus was
organized by the National Sculpture Factory, with curators David
(Dobz) O'Brien, Fergal Gaynor, Charles Esche and Annie Fletcher, and
structured around Reading Groups, Development Cells, Non-Academy
sessions, and Open Organs, with Cork as City of Culture very much the
focus and material.  That the Caucus is happening in conjuction with
SoundEye and the Vinyl Project makes the experience of participation
in any one of them mercurial, exhilarating, bursting with possibility.
 Here are some of the mind-blowing things about this conglomeration of
festivals: internationalism, accessibility, confidence, the housing of
contemporary arts initiatives in and out of exhausted school
buildings: turning the culture inside-out, taking the worn-out and
what it still offers and rejuvenating it, welcoming outsiders into
these working, overworked spaces, infusing what is most worn-out and
used in Irish culture with energy and appetite.  There is huge humor,
and pathos and brio about all this: for me, as an Irish artist who
lives in the United States, who is used to seeing theorists and poets
in universities, not in jaded schoolrooms.  I am more accustomed to
distance and celebration than with accessibility and engagement. 
Accessibility and engagement are what these Festivals offer.  Boy is
it invigorating.

FLASHBACK TO FRIDAY NIGHT AT TREVOR'S

Charles Bernstein in Trevor's little sitting room.  Trevor sitting
opposite talking.  Fergal sitting beside Trevor, maybe keen to engage
with Charles but it doesn't happen.  Fergal's friend Dennis, almost as
wild-looking as Fergal, finishing a PhD in England, sitting next, then
Susan Bee in an armchair, then me on a pile of narrow planks, sometime
to be book shelves.  Susan, Dennis, Fergal and I talk and as the
conversation escalates I'm more and more amazed (totally uninfluenced
by the cups of tea Trevor is serving) by the concepts of the Cork
Caucus, only slowly dawning on me.  I feel like shouting with joy and
still feel great the next morning.  This is a Festival Complex or
Festival Hub or Festival Whirlwind.  If I had understood what what
happening in Cork, I would have booked more time here, if I could. 
One week was great, and brought me SoundEye or most of it.  But not
enough Vinyl Project or Cork Caucus.  I would have liked to go on the
Discursive Picnic.  I would have like to hear Cork reggae.  To hear
Gayatri Spivak.  Discuss with Chantal Mouffe.  All of it.  Patrick
Kavanagh's distinction between the provincial and the parochial was an
attempt to recognize the integrity of local structures.  It's probably
redundant anyway, our concepts of structure having altered so
considerably.  I learned an awful lot during my week in Cork: all the
poetry that was in Ireland when I left but I didn't quite see it
because it was called visual art, or was English; how what's happening
in Cork just now makes me want to contribute; how things are not what
they seem; how I too carry mistaken and outworn perceptions of
Irishness, no good to anyone.  I don't feel like Rip Van Winkle.  Well
maybe Rip Van Winkle on Viagra.

BACK TO FERGAL'S READING

Fergal started with reading two poems about Cork, one of which was
"very influenced by taking care of Trevor's house."  I think this was
a "half-sestina."  Fergal's last words were "To the slow / silent
revolution."

AFRICAN MASS

After this I went back down to the Christian Brothers School on
Sullivan's Quay where all the other readings had been held, where the
Vinyl Project is based, where Simon Cutts' and Erica Van Horn's
terrific book store is still open, and where the African Mass is in
session.  Outside the school, at the back entrance, all the cars have
L plates.  In the courtyard a small African-Irish girl in a flouncy
dress is sitting on the Aran Islands.  There are children everywhere. 
I go into the gymnasium.  It is alive.  A man at the door offers me a
chair.  I decline and go to stand at the back.  At the front of the
room, far away, a leader with a microphone.  At the front, mostly men
and women I think, on their feet.  Everyone very dressed up.  In the
middle, more people, more women, sitting down.  Toward the back,
women, lots and lots of children, all very dressed up, some of the
boys in African dress, most of the girls in very fancy dresses, their
hair carefully and intricately braided and decorated.  The gymnasium
ripples and rushes in constant movement.  The open doorway pulsates. 
Voices are lifted in praise and thanks.  That's mostly what I hear:
"Thank you!  Thank you!"  A woman offers me a chair and this time I
take it.  Thank you.  I am thinking of lots of things; of course one
of them is Frederick Douglass and how amazed he would be to see the
sight of hundreds of Africans celebrating the Mass in a bare gymnasium
in the dying Christian Brothers School in Cork, as I am.

Aftere some time at the Mass, I go to explore other parts of the
school building, mainly to find pieces from the Vinyl Project which I
hadn't had time to see previously.  From an upstairs room I could hear
the shouting voices of children in Sunday school.  On the wall of a
corridor, photos of pupils at the Feis Maitiu. But also a photo of an
artist project involving to the school.  African-Irish children's
voices shouting upstairs.  Dennis, Fergal's friend who helped install
the projectors for the Cork Necronautical presentation during the
week, told me that he had gone to school there and been beaten by a
teacher in the very room we were using for readings and in which he
was working.  "But I didn't mind," he said.

TREVOR JOYCE & MICHAEL SMITH
Trevor and Michael founded New Writers' Press in 1967.  Some of these
books were part of my life, none more so than Augustus Young's On
Loaning Hill which redefined poetry for me when I was 17 or so.  For a
full list see http://indigo.ie/~tjac/Publishers/nwp_publications.htm
I also read Michael and Trevor's magazine, The Lace Curtain, as a
chiseller.  The achievement of Trevor Joyce and Michael Smith, who set
out nearly 40 years ago to revive the Modernist tradition in Ireland,
is very considerable.  I am in awe of both of them, though neither
invites awe.

Watching Trevor during this Festival is witnessing a human miracle. 
He is the Festival and attends to every detail of it, attending every
reading and opening his house at night.  Matthew and Trevor seem to
work seamlessly together, barely seeming to confer but always being
there.  It's a complex event in a very rich environment.  Everything
happens on time.  Everyone is happy.  It's an incredible program. 
Everything is taken care of.  It just beat all when Trevor produced
the currant scones still hot from the oven for breakfast on Sunday. 
Churns his own butter too.

Trevor and Michael alternated their reading, presenting three sections
each.  According to my notes:

Trevor, naturally enough, read "a phantom hypersestina."

Some lines, not necessarily from that:

"She died in the night.
She was a barbarian."

"Then that's fresh meat for dinner,
said the pig to the knife."

The window of the borrowed room was open as it was a hot day but Tom
Leonard requested that it be closed as the street was a little noisy,
so Trevor, who else, went to close it.  It didn't want to close and
hurt his hand.

Michael Smith read some Dublin poems.  

Someone, I think Trevor, says, "We both work a lot with translation
but I'm protected by an ignorance of the languages I'm translating."

I think someone says:

"I must punish the eyes of my face
for looking on someone who does not care."

Trevor can click his fingers extremely well and does so, to mark
stanza breaks.  Even though Trevor hurt his hand, and carries a weight
of responsibility here, I can see poetry delivering him back to good
humor again.

This is a very substantial reading.  Trevor and Michael end, very
appropriately, with a shared piece originating from a 10-line poem by
Michael, into which Trevor had inserted 2 lines between every two of
Michael's and then two more, giving four lines between every two of
Michale's, 50 lines in all, Trevor says.  (I did a diagram of this and
it came to 46 lines so I'll have to consult with Trevor about it.)

BRIAN COFFEY TRIBUTE
I'm sorry to say I missed this as I went to make a quick mug of tea.  

FANNY HOWE & TOM LEONARD
Things get worser and worser as I missed most of Fanny and Tom's
readings too.  I had decided to return to Dublin with Ian Davidson,
who was driving, as Trevor's son Owen had warned me that the evening
buses to Dublin might be full and I didn't want to risk not making it
as my small daughter was expecting me (that makes for an interesting
reversal).  Ian wanted to leave at 5pm, then 4.30pm.  I wanted to
participate in the last scheduled event of the Festival, the Robert
Creeley Tribute, and fearing I wouldn't be able to do so in person,
went into the next room to write something for Trevor to read on my
behalf.  So to those of you reading this to find out about Fanny and
Tom's readings and inflicted instead with my domestic yearnings and
arrangements, I am sorry.  But I am mostly sorry for myself because I
would have dearly loved to hear Fanny Howe and to have had the
opportunity to talk to her, and time to stay around.  As I sat next
door writing I could hear Fanny reading, and the applause, and it was
truly a balancing act: I wanted very much to be in there listening but
I wanted to speak for Robert Creeley too, or speak for myself, or
Providence:

Robert came to Providence with his arms full of 5 decades of poetry &
poets.  No-one else can bring such bounty to events now.  No-one else
could hold such bounty so lightly.  He was not a grand old man.  He
was there for anyone who wished to engage with him.

As it turned out, I finished my notes before the end of Tom's and so
was able to join in the gales of laughter at the people-knotted
doorway of the crowded room.  Trevor let me go first and I read my
piece and was on my way, Richard Deming was reading a poem by Robert
Creeley as I left.  Ian and I drove north to Dublin.  The whole
country was bathed in sun.  We were stopped once by the police.

DISCLAIMER
This whole account has been very partial and subjective, I'm sorry it
wasn't better.  Sin é mo scéal.  Má tá bréag ann, bíodh.  Is mise a
chum is a cheap é.