_____________________________________ A CELEBRATION OF WORD AND MUSIC, for St. Patrick's Day, Saturday, March 17th, 2012 10:30 a.m. CLOQUET PUBLIC LIBRARY, 320 Fourteenth Street, Cloquet, Minnesota, U.S.A., 55720 - 2051 St. Patrick's Day will be celebrated with a literary reading and traditional Irish music at the Cloquet Public Library at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, March 17th. American-Irish author and Cloquet native Séamas Cain will read from his recently published poetry-novel “The Dangerous Islands.” The reading will be accompanied by music performed on the Celtic harp and penny whistle by Mary Hagen and Linda Crumpton. All proceeds from the sale of “The Dangerous Islands” at this event will go to support the Programming Department at the Cloquet Public Library. Séamas Cain is a poet, playwright, conceptual artist, performance artist, and theater director, who has written about Ireland for many years. Born in Cloquet, he has been active in Irish artistic and political circles since his first involvements in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. The Northern Ireland conflict, known as “The Troubles,” was an early focus of his essays, pamphlets, and manifestos. In an essay written in Northern Ireland in 1968, Cain expressed his understanding of the struggle of the Irish Civil Rights Movement as a hope to create a non-violent and humanist movement against the tyranny of the British Establishment while deploring the “mindless violence” of the paramilitaries. Ireland's struggles form the backdrop of his most recent work, “The Dangerous Islands.” “The Dangerous Islands” is an unconventional novel that combines aspects of various genres, including poetry and play script, in conveying the experience of a young Irish-American man from 1965 to 1998. Francis M. Carroll, author of “The Fires of Autumn : The Cloquet-Moose Lake Disaster of 1918” and “Crossroads in Time : A History of Carlton County, Minnesota,” has written that Cain's novel “invites the reader into a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and images. The experience is both intensely personal and cosmic. Séamas Cain's work comes out of the world of ancient Celtic sagas, out of the séances of William Butler Yeats, out of T.S. Eliot's desert wastelands, and especially out of James Joyce's play with language. He takes the reader to mysterious islands, as well as dangerous islands.” Mr. Cain has been the recipient of grants from the IMRAM Festival in Ireland, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, among other organizations. He describes his novel as “a non-Classic coming-of-age tale. It is a story of self-education and self-development, with convictions and disillusionment. But it resists all pigeonholing, for it is also a novel of ideas ranging across literature, philosophy and politics.” “The Dangerous Islands” has been published in Ireland by The Red Jasper Press, an independent publishing house under the curatorship of Dr. Kit Fryatt, lecturer in English at the Mater Dei Institute of Education, a part of Dublin City University. Dr. Fryatt organizes activities of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies, in which Mr. Cain has contributed. The book's preface has been written by American-Irish poet Sheila E. Murphy. Mary Hagen has been a local harper for many years. Linda Crumpton is a member of a Celtic music group that performs regularly at Carmody's Irish Pub in Duluth, Minnesota. Both musicians are Cloquet residents. Copies of “The Dangerous Islands” are available through Berkeley Books of Paris, France; Housmans Bookshop in London, England; Boekie Woekie of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Loft Bookshop and Gregory Carr Books in Dublin; Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the UMD Bookstores in Duluth. For more information about availability, scroll down the page at ... http://www.freewebs.com/seamascain _____________________________________ For additional information, contact Mark King ... E-Mail : [log in to unmask] Phone : 218.879.1531 CLOQUET PUBLIC LIBRARY, 320 Fourteenth Street, Cloquet, Minnesota, U.S.A., 55720 - 2051 _____________________________________