Arts & Culture

HOT on the heels of the huge publicity boost for North Clare created by the TV show ‘Smother’ and the two-part documentary ‘The Burren: Heart of Stone,’ Lisdoonvarna is set for a visitor boost this summer after inspiring a movie on the world-famous matchmaking festival. Entitled, ‘As Luck Would Have It,’ the movie premiered on the Hallmark Channel last week. It stars Irish actor Allen Leech, who played Tom Branson in the hugely popular ‘Downton Abbey,’ and US actress JoAnne Garcia Swisher from the Netflix series ‘Sweet Magnolia’. The film’s plot revolves around JoAnne’s character, Lindsey, who travels to Ireland to acquire land to build a resort. She decides to enter the local matchmaking festival to prove her investment and win over a handsome local. The film is one of two major television productions to reference the festival in recent years. The multi-award winning ‘Schitt’s Creek’ features a Singles Week in the series four finale, with a serious nod to …

SIXMILEBRIDGE based author and Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) lecturer Tracy Fahey has overcome the limitations of lockdown to produce a new collection of stories entitled, I Spit Myself Out. Tracy, who is Head of Department of Fine Art and Education, at the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), had to face and overcome the challenges of Covid-19 in order to produce the collection. She penned I Spit Myself Out during the anxious days of the first lockdown of 2020. Her previous book, The Unheimlich Manoeuvre, nominated in 2017 for a British Fantasy Award, explored the psychological terrors of the enclosed female domestic sphere. Tracy said that, given this preoccupation with confined spaces, writing during the pandemic wasn’t easy. “I found it difficult to write this book,” she said. “There was the cognitive dissonance of trying to stay cheerful and mentally healthy, and then the imperative of going to these dark places to write. Now that I re-read this book, the inflections of …

NEW Directions, Maps and Journeys are the themes of Poetry Day and the inspiration behind a project being undertaken by Mountshannon Arts, as the community organisation reflects on its 25-year history. Poetry Day takes place on Thursday, April 29. Poet Róisín Bugler notes that it will also mark the first outing this year for Moutshannon Arts, whose festival has been inspiring and entertaining audiences from East Clare and far further afield, for a quarter of a century. “We are still curtailed by Covid-19,” Róisín said, “but Poetry Day will be our first opportunity to showcase Mountshannon Arts this year on the 25th anniversary of the festival. “We’ve been doing something a little different for Poetry Day and this year people have been responding to the popular and beautiful local art trail.” This ‘ekphrastic’ poetry project – where one art work is inspired by another – has been embraced enthusiastically, with inspiring results. “Ordinarily, I would put out a general call …

CLARE County Council and Creative Ireland are encouraging children and young people to get creative at home to celebrate Cruinniú na nÓg, which takes place on June 12. This ‘Gathering of Young People’ encourages artistic expression and creativity for everyone aged 0 to 18 years, and is also supported by RTÉ. The one-day event is designed to empower, to develop creative potential and to foster the expression of creativity. The Creative Ireland Clare Culture Team is inviting children and young people to create a piece of art with the theme ‘My Happy Place’. This can be a painting, poem, anything creative. This will give all young people a chance to showcase their creativity. Art work will then be posted on the Creative Ireland Clare Facebook page and Clare Cruinniú Instagram Page. The office will also feature the art work on the Cruinniú na nÓg’s National Day Programme in June. Those who would like to take part are asked to like …

THIS Sunday is the 80th birthday of Uachtaráin na hÉireann, Michael D Higgins. Now well into the second term of his presidency, he has generally enjoyed very high levels of public approval. Michael D grew up in Ballycar, Newmarket-on-Fergus and went to the local school there before going on to St Flannan’s. This week his brother John, who still lives in Ballycar, said he couldn’t have envisaged the success he would enjoy in public life. “That’s true, that’s true. Politics is a funny game and a good game.” As a boy the future president was a voracious reader, he recalls. “He’d read a lot of books, whatever books were available in the library at the time.” In 1993 Michael D became the country’s first ever Minister for Arts, and John says that helped bring him to greater prominence, although he had already been a TD for several years. “Eventually Labour got into Government with Fine Gael and that was the …

AN APPRECIATION of what is local is one of the (few) upsides of lockdown. Being restricted last year to a 2km, and later a 5km radius for exercise, certainly proved productive for Newmarket-on-Fergus author, Colm Liddy. As a self-confessed “stroller,” Colm, a pharmacist by profession, began to see his native place in a new light. Fascinated by traces of past hidden in ruins and monuments dotted around the area, his inquiring mind led him to research colourful characters, locations and incidents dating from the 1600s to the 1980s. The result is a treasure trove of history in Colm’s latest book, Long Ago in Newmarket-on-Fergus. “I suppose it was the total collapse in sporting activities that forced me to find something to occupy the time,” Colm told The Champion. “I’m fairly obsessed with sport and would normally be playing it and training kids. Covid put an end to all of that. So, my wife and I did a lot of walking …

HEART of Stone is the title of a visually stunning two-part series to air on RTÉ One at 6.30pm next Sunday. The Burren is a place full of intrigue and mystery to Lahinch-based film-maker Katrina Costello, who has been working there for over 13 years. “It is not a landscape that gives up her secrets easily, but in every fold of rock and around every corner there is always a new surprise,” she remarked. Heart of Stone captures the raw and complicated beauty of the Burren using intimate natural history photography and the spontaneous insights of a cast of local contributors. Narrated by Brendan Gleeson, the piece takes audiences on a journey through the ages, tracing the genetic story of the Irish people. It tells the story of the Irish hunter-gatherers and reveals what became of them. It asks if prehistoric farmers irreversibly altered this landscape and if modern Irish society is descended from those who first lived here over …

AWARD winners have been revealed in the very first Clare Drama Radio Play Festival which concluded its hugely successful run on Easter Sunday night. The initiative involved groups from around the country sending their pre-recorded short dramas to Scariff Bay Community Radio (SBCR) who broadcast a feast of radio plays in collaboration with Clare Drama Festival. Ranked in first place for their production of When I Was God was the Kilmeen Drama Group, who received the The Alan Sparling Perpetual Trophy. The Clonakilty-based group beat off stiff competition from six other short-listed companies, including the Doonbeg Drama Group and the Sliabh Aughty Drama Group. The award for direction also went to Kilmeen with Denis O’Sullivan taking that prize. The title of Best Actress went to Muriel Caslin O’Hagan from Balally Players, for her role as Marion in Pizzazz, while Best Supporting Actress went to Lasairfhíona Kennedy for her role as Tríona in Manic Monday with the Sliabh Aughty Drama Group. …