Culture

First, I have an academic update (I am in school, remember.) I have an adviser for my MA thesis! Dr. Lionel Pilkington will be supervising me for the next six months or so. I met with him on Friday, and he seemed very excited about being my adviser. I still don't have an actual thesis question, but our meeting helped me refine my nebulous "something to do with Irish theater and colonialism" to "something to do with late 19th century Irish melodrama and colonialism," so at least I have a bit of a focus now. He gave me a list of authors and books to look at, which I've been doing this weekend, and we'll meet again in a few weeks, at which time I will hopefully have a stronger sense of an actual topic. Exciting!


In non-scholarly news, this week was one full of culture for me. For starters, this week held the Múscailt arts festival at NUIG, so there were many events for that.

Tuesday night, I went to the Múscailt poetry slam. I got to see some terrible poetry and some great poetry. Notably, one of the best readers was a boy who looked to be about ten or eleven years old. By objective standards, his poetry was good, though not great; given his age, however, he was awesome. (One of his poems involved the words "shit" and "fuck," which didn't appear to shock anyone in the audience, including his mother; the Irish have what I feel to be a much more sensible attitude toward profanity than Americans, and no one really cares about swearing in front of children or if children swear.) The winner of the slam was actually this boy's mother, a woman named Mags Treanor, and she was excellent. I also got to see Stephen Murray, who I have seen on a couple occasions; he is still one of the best readers and slam poets I've ever seen, and it's always worth watching him read.

Thursday night, still a part of Múscailt, our class had tickets (that were graciously provided by the Centre for Irish Studies) to the Traditional Music concert. "Traditional Music" is really just the start of what we saw: a band with a fiddle, accordion, and classical guitarist; a sean-nos singer; an Uilleann piper; a storyteller; two sean-nos dancers, one a 14-year-old boy and one a pregnant woman (accompanied by the fiddler and accordion player from earlier); a contemporary singer (accompanied by the fiddler, accordion player, and guitarist); and a grand finale with the all the instrumental musicians and the dancers. Everything was absolutely excellent, and it was a lovely evening.

Friday night, I went to the "Over the Edge 2007 Poetry Showcase." This was a reading from the 10-or-so Galwegian poets who published books in 2007. It took place at Sheridan's wine bar, which is a wonderful classy little bar/store. There is a cheesemonger's below, and the wine bar upstairs is about the size of a kitchen, with three walls devoted to racks of wine. The "kitchen" atmosphere was highlighted by the long wooden tables and blue tiled walls. When the room was packed with well-dressed literati, all of whom were standing around holding glasses of wine, it made us¹ feel like we were at someone's fancy dinner party. The mayor of Galway was there, as well, wearing his mayoral chain, and he gave an address. Each of the poets read three poems, so it was almost like a poetry sampler. Mags Treanor, from the slam on Tuesday, read, as well as my friend Neil McCarthy. After the reading, Brianne, Quincy, and I went with Neil and a couple of the other poets to Freeney's, one of Galway's top old-man pubs, and I managed to get a signed copy of Neil's book for the price of three kisses on the cheek.


In conclusion, I love Galway's art and poetry scene. It took me a while, but I finally feel like I have an established "social circle." The fact that it's comprised mainly of poets and academics makes me happy.




1: I went with my friends Brianne, Meredith, and Jen; we met our friends Quincy and Stephen there, as well as seeing our Irish teacher. It was quite a social event.