Ennis festival brought to book

ONE of the county town’s annual cultural highlights, the Ennis Book Club Festival, takes place at a number of venues this weekend.
Over the years, there have been a host of top-class speakers and authors at the event and people from all around the country will attend this year.
Ciana Campbell has been heavily involved with the festival since its foundation and she said it always takes place at this time of year for a number of reasons.
“This is the sixth festival. The first was in 2007 but we started working on it in 2006. We decided on this time of year for a number of reasons. If people were going to travel to it, it didn’t clash with other things like literary festivals and people might have recovered from the credit card bill at Christmas.”
She said the centralised booking system used showed that people came from 20 counties to attend events last year.
This year the festival kicks off with a talk at 2pm on Friday afternoon with Mike Power entitled Reading-Has it a future in the digital age?
“That event is very much of interest to people who work in things like the library services and to parents and teachers,” says Ciana.
In the last couple of years, the rise of digital readers has led to a change in how books are consumed and purchased. While she says she hasn’t used the technology often enough to make up her mind on it, she feels it’s the latest in a long line of changes regarding reading.
On a personal level, there are a few things she particularly enjoys. “I do read poetry but there’s something about being read to that transforms the experience. Something very short can bring you to another place or give you food for thought or whatever, it’s something I love myself.
“I always enjoy the symposium because you never know what’s going to come up. This year we have Caitriona Crowe who is from the National Archives. She was responsible for putting the 1901 and 1911 censuses up on line.
“Michael Harding, people would read his column in the Irish Times and he’s also an author and playwright. Manchán Magan with his travel and broadcasting will be interesting. Christine Dwyer Hickey is a novelist and she’s very much on the up. There’s a nice combination and they’re not all coming from the same hymn sheet.”
One of Saturday’s big events is a talk in Glór entitled Ten Books You Should Read, which will be given Fergus Finlay and Dr Pat Donlon.
While Ciana said she has the lists from the pair, she wasn’t giving anything away.
“They sent me the two lists and they’re very different. You can imagine with Fergus, there might be a political influence but there are a few surprises in there too. With Pat, as well, there’s a good spread.”
As all and sundry are well aware, huge numbers of people have faced crises of one type or another over the last few years and many will be interested in another event at Glór on Saturday, in which Maureen Gaffney will speak on the theme of Flourishing in difficult times.
“Maureen Gaffney is a psychologist and a broadcaster. She’d be a well-known commentator and she does have a very interesting perspective,” says Ciana.
“She has written a book about flourishing, which is about more than just surviving difficulty, it’s about turning it into something where you actually flourish.”
On Sunday, there will be a lunch at the Old Ground Hotel, in which Wonderland Productions will hold a dramatisation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Huge work goes into preparing the festival, and sometimes events can overtake plans.
“The year that Gerry Adams was here was the same day as two soldiers were shot in the North. The media interest trying to get a hold of him was phenomenal. He was taking calls as he was coming into Glór. Then Caimin Jones asked the question, did he condemn it. They’d never condemned atrocities before and he said ‘I do’. It was something they’d never done before. You just don’t know, you put everything together and you don’t know what’ll happen next.”
Ciana does hold some great memories of things that have happened at the festival over the years.
“The first highlight was that it happened at all. There is an extraordinary feeling when you have an idea and see it become a reality. Some really nice things have happened; listening to Paul Durcan read that was beautiful. Having Edna O’Brien acknowledged in her local county, that was really lovely. Nuala O’Faolain was with us just before she died, I think it was probably her last public engagement. Some of us knew she was quite ill but we didn’t know it was as serious. She couldn’t really walk unaided into the room but she saw it through. Those kind of things are very special.”
As soon as the 2011 event was over, work began on 2012 and around the end of next week, the organisers will probably start thinking about next year. “In a way, I’m actually thinking of 2013 as well. Sometimes something mightn’t work out for this year but you have the file open for the following year. It might be a speaker or an idea for a workshop or a venue. It’s a really good time, you can say that worked, that didn’t work.”
Invitations to speakers generally go out in the early summer, well over six months before the festival takes place.
Ciana says it’s important to the organisers that the festival has strong links with local groups and she feels there has been strong support.
“People have come every year, supporters have come from Cork and Donegal and we’ve great local support. We try to support groups too, the Three Legged Stool Poets, the Clare Youth Theatre. There are a number of different spinoffs and it’s very important that there is a cultural spin off. We make sure there are Clare authors, Clare performers and Clare speakers, it’s part of our mission.”