FROM THE ARCHIVES:Nell McCafferty reported from the sixth annual Listowel Writers' Week, which was competing with other attractions, including the 1977 general election, in which Fianna Fáil routed a coalition government.
A woman who was made redundant after working 23 years in the same Dublin factory told me she had written a book about it and had come to the Co Kerry town of Listowel to see a publisher.
The publisher had actually set up her own printing company two years ago when no one else would publish her book, which had since done very well. A youth of skin and bone who came here broke in 1975, has returned on a scholarship, filled out, and bursting with a poem which he intends to launch on his 19th birthday. And why not? Listowel Writers’ Week, born in 1971, has produced greater and lesser feats.
Not least among them is Carole Broderick, sun-tanned and passionate, dressed in brilliant green, with gold jewellery to match, who did a quick flamenco during the sherry reception which began the week. The Listowel calendar begins and ends with the moon, and the number of days do not matter. In the hours available to us until Saturday, we will be expected to attend lectures, exhibitions, theatres, book launchings and every pub in town. It is a question, John B Keane warned, of pacing and spacing. Those who cannot take the space can retire to Ballybunion for a hot seaweed bath.
Yesterday was easy enough. In the morning there were only exhibitions of paintings, wood sculpture, copper work and international posters to attend, plus a Séamus Wilmot memorial lecture, in Irish, by Máirtín Ó Direáin, sponsored by RTÉ.
[ . . . ]In the evening there was a choice between a musical evening with James Joyce or a theatrical performance by Siamsa Tíre, the Irish national folk theatre. For the energetic, there was no choice at all – there being two performances of each, the last beginning at 10pm. On the other hand, you would then have missed the George Fitzmaurice memorial Lecture, or The Year of the Hiker, a play by a well-known publican [John B Keane].
Those who could stand the pace might then attend the Talking Shop in a pub or the festival club in a hotel. [ . . . ]Of course, life goes on as normally as life is conducted in Listowel. I was awakened before breakfast yesterday by the clattering of ponies in the square. Breeders had brought their animals to town for the Government inspection and subsidy, and they were trotting the animals back and forth all as unselfconsciously as the budding writers who trotted between venues.
On Friday there will be horse trading of a different kind. Jack Lynch [Fianna Fáil leader] is coming to the square to wean votes away from local Fine Gael TD, Gerard Lynch. He will be competing with the Most Rev Dr Simms, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, who will be delivering a lecture at the same time on the Book of Kells, Bell, Book and Candle: there is a welcome in Listowel for them all.