Arts & Culture

BARRING further public health crises, the Ennis Book Club Festival will have in-person events on the first weekend in March. One of these will be entitled Motherhood, Destiny and Choices: Irish and American debuts asking tough questions, to be held at St Columba’s Church on the afternoon of March 5. Among the speakers will be Galway based Edel Coffey, whose first novel Breaking Point, has just come out. It tells the story of Susannah, a working mother, pulled in different directions each day, working as a doctor, researcher and professor as well as being a wife and mother. One frantic morning, with a disrupted routine and a work emergency, she leaves her young daughter in the car on a hot New York day. When she realises her mistake, it is already too late. Another woman Adelaide is a reporter covering a subsequent negligence trial, and for her the story is a familiar one, stirring up ghosts from her own long-buried …

THE Pagan holiday of Imbolc on February 1 makes an apt date for the release on Amazon and iTunes of Paddy Murphy’s horror drama The Perished. The word ‘Imbolc’ means “in the belly of the Mother”, because the seeds of spring are beginning to stir in the belly of Mother Earth. And the plot of the Killaloe-based film-maker’s feature, which premiered in 2019, revolves around a young woman’s unplanned pregnancy, contemplation of abortion and subsequent isolation in a house haunted by spirits from its terrible past as a mother and baby home. For Paddy and the crew it’s a great relief that the film can now be seen in this neck of the woods, having been denied its home premiere in Limerick’s Odeon Cinema in early 2020. That had been meant to happen on Friday, the 13th of March (he sure knows how to pick appropriate release dates), but a certain pandemic came along and put the kibosh on that. …

A LABOUR of love has resulted in hundreds of Clare’s holy wells being documented and surveyed, with their details to be made available online.  The Clare Holy Wells Project, supported by Clare County Council and funded by The Heritage Council and Creative Ireland, will be formally launched via Zoom on St Brigid’s Day, Tuesday, February 1 at 7pm. The event will celebrate the efforts to survey and document 237 holy wells in Clare. In recent years, surveyors Michael Houlihan and Tony Kirby produced a fascinating survey of a part of local heritage that holds a special place in the hearts of many Clare people. For the first time, information on all of Clare’s known holy wells is gathered in one place. The webpage can be searched by region, as well as alphabetically. Maps, photographs and detailed information bring the stories of these wells alive. “Local knowledge was crucial during the survey and many people responded to requests for information,” said …

THE Ennis Musical Society has confirmed that this year’s production of Legally Blonde has been postponed until next year, writes Jessica Quinn. However, the local group has said there are plans for a smaller scale project for this April or May. The society had planned to hold auditions for the popular musical production of Legally Blonde earlier this month. However, a spokesperson for EMS has said that the society has made “the difficult decision to officially postpone Legally Blonde until 2023”. Just last November the society announced plans for the much anticipated show which was set to run in glór from the end of March and into early April. The society had been unable to put on a show in 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions, and their 2020 production was cancelled after just two performances. Society chairperson Rachael Culligan at the time had said they were looking forward to getting back on stage in 2022. She also made an appeal …

HOLLYWOOD superstar John Travolta landed his private jet in Shannon yesterday and posted a video on Instagram of his trip. The star of films like Pulp Fiction, Grease, Face/Off and many more posted the short video and in the style of a flight captain addressing the passengers said, “So tonight our flying time from Florida to Shannon is seven hours and four minutes, just so everybody knows. And I’ll see you… I’ll film when we arrive.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Travolta (@johntravolta) After landing he posted further footage from Dromoland Castle thanking fans for supporting his daughter Ella who is forging a career as a pop star. He employed a fairly dubious Irish accent to say “So, I’ve arrived safely in Ireland. As the Irish say, ‘life is what you make it,’ it is, it is.”

CLARECASTLE tenor Dean Power will be among those performing at a special concert next month to celebrate James Joyce’s 140th birthday and the centenary of the publication of Ulysses. The concert on February 1  in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire will feature for the first time in Ireland, Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer’s settings of Joyce’s Chamber Music. As well as Dean’s singing, the performance will also feature Mairéad Hurley on piano and Susie Kennedy as the narrator. In 1907, the year of its publication, Palmer wrote to Joyce asking permission to set some poems from Chamber Music. Joyce enthusiastically received the ten songs he was sent and wrote, “I hope you will set all of Chamber Music in time” and “I shall be glad to hear from you and to know that your delicate music is meeting at last with the appreciation it deserves” Joyce tried to arrange publication of the songs on several occasions but Palmer was hesitant and it never happened. The reason for …

THERE is growing excitement that the annual Ennis Book Club Festival will take place in person this year, writes Bridget Ginnity. We can look forward to welcoming writers like John Banville, Claire Keegan, Fintan O’Toole and Michael Harding to Ennis on the first weekend in March. The core of the Festival is book clubs and this year there is an opportunity to join one of two book clubs running for a limited period from February to April. The theme of both book clubs is a very current one, the climate. One book club will read and discuss “Active Hope” by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. The second book club is based on the pope’s letter on climate change, “Laudato Si”, where he appeals for a dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our plant. The subtitle of the Active Hope book “how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy” describes the essence of the book and …

A SCARIFF photographer is hoping to have a second video shown on RTÉ television, as part of The People’s Angelus. James Treacy, from Moynoe, has been filming with his co-producer, Martin Ryan, of the Limerick College of Further Education (LCFE) for a number of months and the final product is being edited. The short film features farmer John Beston baling silage and cutting hay in the late summer, then using it to fodder his animals in the winter months. The piece was chosen because it fits the meditative and reflective tone of The People’s Angelus. “We have been shooting this video since last July 2021 and we now have to put the jigsaw puzzle together,” Mr Treacy said. Previously, the duo made a short film at Kilmallock Mart in County Limerick to reflect the rhythm of farming life and the role of the mart. That piece will be aired again on RTÉ One at 6pm on Friday, January 28, under …