Arts & Culture

Frank Golden launches his new collection ‘If You Tolerate This’ at Ennis book Club Festival. Here he writes of his love for barren and beautiful places IRAN had been a place of interest ever since the early eighties when I lived and worked in Kuwait. I had gone there to earn a little quick money and to pay off some debts. This was in 1981/82 during the Iran/Iraq war. The regular shelling of the port of Basra was audible in the coastal compound we lived in further down the coast. Each day we would be driven into the desert to Al-Wafrah which was in the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi. This was the area where US troops dug in prior to their offensive against Sadaam Hussein in 1990. Kuwait was an unattractive society on all kinds of levels but the desert was beautiful. The first serious rain in a decade fell that first Spring and the desert bloomed virtually …

CLARE’S Van Morrison fans will be delighted to hear that he will be performing live in the region this summer. The Belfast blues legend has announced news of a special outdoor performance at King John’s Castle, Limerick on June 29. With one of the most revered catalogues in music history and his huge talents as composer, singer and performer Morrison’s achievements loom large. Tickets go on sale at 9am this Friday via ticketmaster.ie.

A BOOKER prize winner, one of the most lauded writers in the English language today, John Banville says that every one of his books is a failure, and the act of writing leaves him constantly disappointed. He will be at Glór on Saturday, March 5, as part of the Ennis Book Club Festival, appearing alongside fellow author Kevin Power. Originally from Wexford, Banville’s first novel Nightspawn was published in 1971. His Revolutions Trilogy was published between 1976 and 1982, while his 1989 novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guinness Peat Aviation Award. In 2005 his thirteenth novel The Sea won the Booker Prize.  In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, a pathologist based in Dublin. He has won numerous awards and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007, while Italy made him a Cavaliere of the …

COROFIN Drama Society springs back into action after the pandemic with a performance over three nights of a Harold Pinter play. Betrayal, which is produced by John Clancy, will be presented over three performances in St Patrick’s Hall, Corofin, running on March 2, 3 and 5 from 8pm each evening. Thereafter, the society will take the play on the road to regional drama festivals, as it attempts to qualify for the 2022 All-Ireland Final, which will take place in May in Athlone. “It’s such a good feeling to be back performing in our home community,” comments Rona Lyons, PRO with Corofin Dramatic Society. “Covid really impacted on our ability to do what we love so we are feeling really excited as things open up again.” The society enters into the 2022 Drama Festival Circuit full of confidence, having qualified for the All-Ireland One Act Festival which was hosted by Ennis Players in early December. “That was a great experience,” says …

FESTIVAL fever is in the air in East Clare as final preparations are made for the revived and renamed Tuamgraney Harp Festival, writes Fiona McGarry. This Friday (February 25), Nuala’s Bar and Restaurant will hold a festival fundraiser from 9.30am to midday and residents and visitors alike are invited to drop in for cake and a cuppa. There will also be some live music to set the tone for the festival. The festival, which had to be moved online last year due to the pandemic will be back under a new name from May 13 to 15. The committee is in the final stages of planning “a wonderful welcome back” and will be announcing the full line up soon. Previously named The Blossom Harp Festival, the event was first set up in 2016. The festival runs overs two days with the aim of reviving interest in the harp, the Irish national emblem and integral to our culture for centuries, by …

A FIRST year student of Gort Community School has released his debut novel, which was written when he was just 11. Now 13, Joe Fahy from Derrywee West, Derrybrien, has launched a futuristic tale, entitled Glitched, detailing a battle for control of the world. Joe has also been enjoying the media attention surrounding the book. He made an appearance on Today FM’s Dermot and Dave in recent days, along with proud dad, Jimmy.  “[Glitched] is about a 12-year-old boy called Billy who was injected by these nanobots and he meets with some teenagers and he tries to stop a company called AEN from taking over the world,” Joe explained. “All the school kids in Ireland were injected one day by the company. It’s passed off as a vaccine. The chairperson comes into school to see if all the nanobots are working. Billy’s isn’t. It’s glitched.” Joe, also known as JE, told the Today FM duo that he wrote the book …

A CLARE farmer and teacher will appear on TG4 later this month, as part of a six-episode observational documentary titled Contractors, writes Conor Clohessy. The show will air on Thursday, February 24, at 9:30pm, and will explore the working lives and personal narratives of seven agricultural contracting families from diverse locations over the critical period between April and September. Eoin Collins, who teaches Irish at Ennis Community College, is part of Collins Agri, a business his father started in 1994; Eoin specialises in silage, baling, tillage and slurry alongside his father and three brothers. Eoin said: “The camera crews came around first in April and stayed with us until the end of October. They were in no way invasive; they were able to be a fly on the wall, shooting as we went about the day’s business from morning to evening. It’ll be very true-to-life and straightforward.” He admitted that the process was a busy experience, to have the camera …

IT will be a family reunion of sorts for comedian Neil Delamere when he takes to the stage in glór this Friday, writes Jessica Quinn. Among the audience at the Ennis venue will be Clare hurler David Reidy, and the comedian reveals he won’t be holding back when it comes to making fun of his Ennis cousin. Neil tells us that David had been due to join his team on Ireland’s Fittest Family Celebrity Special last summer supporting the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. “Fair play to him, he was going to do it originally but he got injured and couldn’t do it so we had to draft in another cousin. “He’s flying it now. He’s coming to glór and I’ll be slagging him off. It was great craic to do the show, wading through a bog in the middle of Wicklow with your six foot two cousin dragging you over a log. “It was a strange way to spend a …