10. The Society in Strabane

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MAEBH MURPHY: Recently I was in Strabane in Tyrone in Ireland for the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference, where I presented a paper to a lovely audience and spontaneously made some audio recordings.

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BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR: (interjects) Sorry, I’m listening in here.

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MAEBH MURPHY Listen in, and you will hear some of the atmosphere of this unique academic conference and the voices of some of those present.

(Overlapping)

SÉAMUS MACANNAIDH: ...the voices that I think...

ROBIN HULL: ...Genetically...

MARIANNE O’KANE BOAL: ...we’re in Strabane...

LOUISE BOYCE The Alley Arts and Conference Center...

HARJUN ŠILJAK: ... Brendan Behan singing Irish ballads...

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We have clips from the Farmer’s Home Pub...

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EOIN MCGLOIN: (Pub noise)

The modern sense of like amusing ourselves to death kinda...

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MAEBH MURPHY: snippets from the walking tour...

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VIOLET: ... of locations around Strabane, which were important to Brian - Brian O’Nolan.

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MAEBH MURPHY: Interviews with speakers outside the Alley Arts Theatre and Conference Centre...

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SÉAMUS MACANNAIDH: Myles na gCopaleen.

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EMILY RIDGE: to Flann O’Brien.

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CATHERINE FLYNN: Flann O’Brien and the conception.

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MAEBH LONG: because Flann O’Brien

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MICHAEL O CONGHAILE: workshop faoi Flann O’Brien.

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MAEBH MURPHY Audio from the art exhibition and book launch event...

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TOBIAS HARRIS: ... you need to know....

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: ... This is me back in Antaine Ó Fearghail mode...

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OISIN O’NOLAN ...Dad awake th-th-th with the old metal eh ...

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MAEBH MURPHY: And our final night dinner at the Oyster Restaurant, including an interview as Gaeilge with Strabane and Derry City Councillor Antaine Ó Fearghail

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ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Údar agus scríbhneoir iontach tabhachtach é do mhuintir na hÉireann.

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MAEBH MURPHY: and a final compilation of delegate’s personal highlights.

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HARJUN ŠILJAK: Alana’s contribution really helped me...

MAEBH LONG: ...Emily’s postcolonial...

ELLIOTT MILLS: ...Brian Lambkin’s...

DAVID O’KANE: ...Brian’s, about the Gormley’s...

MICHAEL PIERSE: ...Oisín brought to tears, Oisín.

CATHERINE FLYNN: ...conversation with, em, Anne O Nualláin

BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: ...that day we were walking around the town...

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MAEBH MURPHY: We open on the eve of the conference, a Tuesday in Strabane in late June, where it’s after 10 o’clock and still bright out.

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ALANA GILLESPIE: Well, we are here at the Farmer’s Home Pub, which is a lovely spot that’s got about one, two, three, five, five wee snugs in it. And it’s filled with young folk from Strabane who probably just finished their A-levels or their O-levels or whatever it is they’re doing and a load of weird Flann O’Brien heads.

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(Pub sounds, craic agus ceol)

TESS FINNEGAN BURCHMORE: That was fabulous...

JOE BROOKER: ...You know when you hear a BBC documentary...

EOIN MCGLOIN: ... It’s the modern sense of like, amusing yourselves to death kind of thing...

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(Live music)

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(Alarm clock beeping)

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RHONDA: My name is Rhonda, this is Mark and Violet and we’re going to be your tour guide this morning. Today we’re going to give you a bite-sized tour of locations around Strabane which were important to Brian - Brian O’Nolan If youse would like to follow me now please.

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MARK: This here is an image of Bowling Green where Brian lived. If you’d like to pass that round and compare and contrast from now to then.

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MAEBH LONG: Oh, wow.

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WALKING TOUR PARTICIPANT: Where’s the church?

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MARK: The church is just up there. In his Gaelic League activities, Michael met his future wife, Agnes Gormley, formerly of Omagh but a member of the business family at that time who resided at Market Street and Main Street in Strabane. They married at Murlough, Lifford in County Donegal in 1906 which is less than a mile from where we are right now.

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MARK: This blue plaque has been erected as a tribute to Brian, Flann and Myles to mark the respect and esteem in which he has held here and in the country. Shortly after Brian’s birth, his family, Michael V. O’Nolan, now a very successful and upwardly mobile officer, was promoted and transferred to Glasgow.

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VIOLET: There was a cinema here back in the day, I think there was a cinema down there that tall building, and that was a hotel back in the day, previously.

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MAEBH LONG: Okay okay so that’s that blue and gray is commercial hotel and that’s the edge of that - the grey one.

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VIOLET: okay we’re moving up this way then.

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RHONDA: and we could hear the distant clank of mowing machines and the faint hum of the turbines of the linen malls in Sion Mills. Sion Mills is just three miles up the river.

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RHONDA: Do you see where that yellow house, that’s just the end of it there.

BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR: Behind that?

RHONDA: ...behind that, behind the trees.

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MAEBH MURPHY: This final section of the walking tour was recorded on Main Street in Strabane, opposite Gormley’s shoe shop. Our tour guide, Violet, tells us that this was Strabane’s busiest street and it’s still sounding pretty lively.

PASSER-BY: I’ve read his books a couple of times I’ll have you know...

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VIOLET: Thank you.

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VIOLET: Upstairs and seated by the window, they loved to watch the world of Strabane’s busiest street go by. They sat in the luxury of their sitting room, listening to their favourite singer, Count John McCormack, on the gramophone. McCormack continued to be Brian’s favourite singer throughout his life and visits to Strabane and Gormley’s here on the main street continued to be a happy and favourite event throughout the lives of Gearóid, Ciarán and Brian. In 1918, Uncle Eugene was arrested without trial or evidence and was imprisoned on a prison ship, Argenta, anchored at the lough of Belfast.

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(Applause)

BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR: Thank you to all three of our guides, that was great, thank you so much.

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MAEBH MURPHY: Back at the Alley Arts Theatre and Conference Centre, I managed to catch up with a few of the other delegates.

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MAEBH LONG: Well, my name is Maebh Long. I’m the co-director of the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, and I’m also the president of the Flann O’Brien Society.

So, in a way, because Flann O’Brien was so based in Dublin and kind of constructed such a Dublin identity around himself, particularly in his Myles na gCopaleen persona, it made a lot of sense to think of him in terms of Dublin and I suppose it also continued a trajectory of thinking of Irish writers either as kind of as exiled, as have gone away, or in this very Dublin kind of purview, in the same way that contemporary Irish writers, there seems to be this proliferation of narratives about Trinity, as if there was no other university in Ireland. So there’s this very interesting, like Dublin-centric kind of perspective that we get on writers. So coming to Strabane, and it’s my first time in Strabane, has been a really good way of kind of diversifying, I suppose, our thinking of O’Brien, but also maybe just furthering this kind of movement away from Dublin. I mean, of course, a Cork woman would say that.

(Laughter)

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MAEBH MURPHY: Sure you always have the knife out.

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DOMINIC HARKIN: I’m Dominic Harkin. I’m a PhD student at Queen’s University of Belfast. I look at Flann O’Brien and the beginnings of analytic philosophy in the late 20s and 1930s. I’m interested in the role of the scientist in kind of the broader culture and kind of particularly sort of emergent novelistic forms in the early 20th century. So that’s like detective fiction and science fiction, things like that.

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CATHERINE FLYNN: My name’s Catherine Flynn. So I talked about a later piece, something - a teleplay that he wrote specifically for RTE, which was in its infancy in the 1960s. And it’s called O’Dea’s Your Man. And I talked about the two characters, Mr. O’Dea or Mr. O and Ignatius, his underling, as a kind of like queer couple, as a sort of parents of this new Irish nation.

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JOE BROOKER: Joe Brooker, I’m over here from London, from South East London actually. You know, there is this Cambridge companion to Flann O’Brien on the way in due course, and I’m going to be writing a chapter for it about Flann O’Brien and his Irish contemporaries and other Irish figures of the modern times, modern literary history and his relations with them.

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HARUN ŚILJAK: I’m Harun Šiljak. I’m an assistant professor in School of Engineering, Trinity College Dublin. The concept of bringing in new people who are only starting in FLann Studies and who have been working in adjacent areas and who have something to say that’s gonna blow your mind. That’s a radical concept and that needs to be nurtured and the conference has been giving us that for a while now and I really appreciate that.

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EMILY RIDGE: Hi everyone, I’m Emily Ridge. I work at the University of Galway. I teach in 20th century literature. I’m a newcomer to Flann O’Brien studies, but I feel like I’ve been welcomed very warmly into this lovely community and I’m looking forward to pursuing that.

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(Craic agus ceol at the Farmer’s Home pub)

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(Alarm clock beeping)

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MAEBH MURPHY: It is now Thursday, the second day of the conference, and I am strolling to the Alley Theatre, where I hear there is some coffee and snacks.

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ROBIN HULL: Robin Hull, Aldous Huxley Centre Zurich. It’s my first visit. Genetically, I’m half English. Practically, I’m Swiss. So I’m English but not English and I come to Strabane which strikes me as a very interesting place because it looks English but it isn’t English.

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SÉAMUS MACANNAIDH: Hi, I’m Séamus MacAnnaidh from Belcoo in Fermanagh. I’m a writer, a historian. I’ve long been interested in Flann O’Brien. I think maybe from the radio I would have heard people doing recitations or reading excerpts from the work. I’ve always found that - and then - as a writer, I found it very inspiring, the playfulness, the use of the two languages: gur mhair sé idir an dhá teanga agus sin an rud a dhéanamsa mé fhéin. Scríobhaim i nGailig an cuid is mó but I don’t have a sort of a - a reverential attitude to the language. I’m quite happy to kick it about and do things with it and Flann O’Brien was very much the same. He could see how the purists were constricting the language instead of helping it to flourish. Oh yes, the book that I’m working on at the moment is a local history book. Barney Maglone was the pen name of a novel - of a journalist in Fermanagh in the middle of the 19th century. And I’ve come across a series of articles written in the 1850s about the immediate post-famine situation in northwest Donegal where the people were starving, where the landlords seized the commonage on the top of the mountains where the people used to graze their animals, and brought in all these sheep and Scottish shepherds - and then any time anything happened to those sheep, the people were billed. And he tells all these stories. So it’s a primary source. So I think by republishing this, it will illuminate a whole period and start a new debate about what was going on at the time. Well yes, the talk I did this week was looking at how the idea of a columnist in a paper develops a persona and how that takes on a life of its own and how sometimes there’s a creative tension there. For some people, it’s really useful to have this persona. It gives them a freedom, but then also it constricts them because people are expecting a particular style and subject matter from them. And so that happened in the case of Barney Maglone, otherwise known as - who was actually Robert Arthur Wilson. It’s the same in the case of Brian O’Nolan, where Myles na gCopaleen became a larger persona than Brian himself.

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MICHEÁL Ó CONGHAILE: Micheál Ó Conghaile anseo as Connemara. Schríobhneoir agus caith me blianta fad le foilsitheoireacht. Bunadh mé Clo Iar Connacht in 1985 agus caith mé trioch se ag obair - triocha sé bliain ag obair ansin. Ach anois tá mé ar scor agus tá mé scríobh - gearrscéalta, filíocht, úrscéalta - bíonn mé ag aistriú chomh maith. Faoi láthair tá me ag aistriú dramai le Beckett go Gaeilge agus beidh sé sa taibhiú go luath i nGaillimh agus beidh sé i mBaile Atha Cliath ag an Dublin Theatre Festival.

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MARIANNE O’KANE-BOAL: I’m Marianne O’Kane-Boal and I am a curator and a writer on art and architecture and what I’d really like to do is kind of invite other people to reflect on how they’ve built their interest in the author.

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JAMES BACON: Hi, my name is James Bacon. I’m a train driver. I’m currently living in London. I work out at Paddington Station and I drive the express train to Heathrow. And I’ve been a Flann O’Brien fan now for about 35 years...And that was beautiful, taking in both the architecture of the railway, where the boys might have gone out cycling when they were cycling in Donegal. That railway line doesn’t come to Strabane, but Strabane was a huge railway area... The lay of the land, the ground, the bridge over what was the railway is all still there.

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CHIH-HSIEN HSIE: My name is Chih-hsien Hsieh, I’m from Taiwan. I’ve learned a lot that the Irish language matters in Flann O’Brien’s work.

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PÁDRAIG Ó MEÁLÓID: My name is Pádraig Ó Meálóid and I was talking about carpentry. I’ve got to go.

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MAEBH MURPHY: It’s been a very enriching day so far and now it’s time for the launch of exhibitions and books and a very special donation by the O’Nolan family to the people of Strabane.

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(Laughter)

TOBIAS HARRIS: ...you need to know.

EMILY RIDGE: this is the...

TOBIAS HARRIS: I did get the permission to reproduce this very, very fine painting by Micheál Ó Nualláin, which is called A Pint of Plain Is Your Only Man.

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JOSEPH LABINE:

It’s a pleasure to be here. You know, the family made this book possible, you know, and I’m grateful to them. So thank you. Thank you.

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: This is me back in Antaine Ó Fearghail mode. I am also pleased to see the Strabane History Society’s book launch, where Michael Kennedy will say a few words.

JOE BROOKER: Ah!

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MICHAEL KENNEDY:

Maybe we could give one to everybody in the audience. She said no.

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(Laughter)

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BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR: I would like to congratulate Joanne O’Kane, Eamon O’Kane, Matthew O’Kane and David O’Kane and of course Eddie O’Kane on their stunning contributions...There is an exhibit of the Micheál Ó Nualláin art collection out there in the other room, and the Ó Nualláins have made an incredibly generous gift to the people of Strabane and to the Alley Theatre in the last couple of days, but I will let Oisin speak to that.

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OISÍN Ó NUALLÁIN: It’s been amazing to watch and see it grow and to see all the madness. This is the eighth international event. Brian’s done stellar work. I think he deserves a round of applause. (Applause) ...with his hairstyle as well, he might be an Ó Nualláin aswell (laughter). Em, so I’m just glad to see my dad’s work. It’s a little bit emotional having seen his work up. And we used to grow up, you know, going to exhibitions and like a lot going to exhibitions. And when I was young, we didn’t think about it. There was always madness brought up to exhibitions and we were turning up with stuff. Wasn’t really going to school, you know, housekeeping, waking up at midday. But eh, it’s just - it’s wonderful to see it here, there’s a sense of home. Although my dad was a Dublin man, he was born in Dublin, grew up in Dublin, he had lifelong commitment, and he would tell people he’s a Tyrone man. (Laughter) So it’s kind of emotional come back here. I’ve been here for years, since before my dad died. And I’d just like to say I hope you enjoy it. As you can see, I was never going to be normal if you look at some of those paintings. It wasn’t going to be a normal thing. (Laughter) I have Tyrone blood in me for sure. There’s no doubt about that. I have the charge sheets to prove it. (Laughter) So eh I’d just like to say thanks very much to everyone and I’m humbled again Brian by all the great work. Yes, and the painting, sorry, has been donated from our family, the work of my brother, sorry my uncle, is being donated from my family to Strabane. Derry can only loan it by the way.

(laughter)

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MICHAEL KENNEDY: Ey!

OISÍN Ó NUALLÁIN: And that - that’s how close we are to that bit of history. My dad shared a room with Brian when he was actually writing At-Swim Two Birds. And he used to be keeping my dad awake, th-th-th the aul metal eh typewriter. And my dad used to be going mad. And the gestation of that picture was originally...Brian wouldn’t let him do a proper portrait, especially as he got older, and he wasn’t as comfortable with the way he looked. And my dad had done sketches from when he was a child, because my dad was sort of like an artistic prodigy in that way that he got to the College of Arts when he was...a scholarship when he was nine years old, so he was well, well ahead. So that picture was kind of bastardised later, in a good way.

(Laughter)

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So, without further ado, we’re glad, on behalf of Ó Nualláins to donate it to Strabane, forever. Alright.

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(Applause)

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EMILY RIDGE: It really is.

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(Craic agus ceol at Farmers Home pub)

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: It’s Farmers.

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TESS FINNEGAN BURCHMORE: Challenge accepted!

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(Alarm clock)

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MAEBH MURPHY: On Friday morning, I was happy that I got an early night the night before, as it was the final day of the conference.

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Brian Ó Conchubhair. I think by coming here to Strabane, hopefully, we may have changed the presenters and delegates’ attitude towards the man, towards the town, towards the work, have grounded it in a real place, but we also had an impact on the wider community.

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MIKELYN ROCHFORD

There’s something just very ineffable about his stories like The Third Policeman and At Swim Two Birds. So that’s kind of been extended to him as an author for me in a weird way. And so actually being here and seeing the house he grew up in, seeing his family and the crowds and like seeing the places that he would have seen

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and kind of making connections to things he’s written about makes him feel a lot realer.

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MIKELYN ROCHFORD: I am a PhD researcher at the University of York in literature, and I’m doing a project on Flann O’Brien and Irish literary traditions, kind of in conversation with narrative theory, among other authors as well.

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BRIAN LAMBKIN: I think I first read At-Swim Two Birds when I was 17 or 18 and I think at that time it was kind of a cult novel and what attracts young people to something is so - it’s full of obscurity that’s obscure to their parents and that we understand this. But of course you only half understand it.

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Brian Lambkin, retired now but used to work in the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies just down the road at the Ulster American Folk Park between Strabane and Omagh. I think part of what he was trying to do was to get people interested in early Irish literature. He was presenting this Finn material and the Sweeney material in a way and he was hoping that there would be enough of it there to tempt people to dig more into that and find out for themselves and get interested in it. He was making a Middle Irish romance tale accessible to a 20th century audience.

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LIAM CAMPBELL: Absolutely, absolutely.

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And I mean, I love the thing about I didn’t realise that thing about - do you see the black letters or do you read the white in between?

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It’s a bit like that, isn’t it really?

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So my name is Liam Campbell and I’m the director of the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies,

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which is just up the road from here in the Ulster American Folk Park.

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The idea was that places where borders are,

borderlands are kind of liminal places,

but they’re also places of sanctuary.

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ELLIOTT MILLS: I’m Elliott. I have been doing a postdoc at Trinity working on my book on Flann O’Brien, which will be out next year, also editing a book of essays on Irish writers in the civil service, and that will be coming out at the end of this year.

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MYLES SCHALLER: Being named after Myles and reading and thinking about Flann O’Brien, not just in a literary way but in a really personal identity-forming way, has always been... really intense, but also really private for me. Not because I want it to be private, but because in California and Germany, and the other places I live, I’m not surrounded by people who know what I’m talking about.

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MAEBH MURPHY: Just friends you haven’t met yet, you know?

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MICHAEL PIERSE: My name is Michael Pierse and I work at Queen’s University Belfast where I mainly research the cultural production literature of Irish working class life.

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All those characters who kind of comically, in the poor mouth, often expire just as they’re delivering these kinds of, you know,

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performances for Dublin Gaelgeóirí

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But of course deep beneath that, that laughter is a deep tragedy.

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of the new state’s veneration of the ideal of the Gael

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but its short shrift for the poor people of the West.

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And it struck me that there was a real consonance there with Behan’s sense of the same thing for the excluded and the marginalised of the East. And I don’t think Behan’s recognised enough for -

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not alone his service to the working class and his issues around class and

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inequality,

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but actually so much of his writing is about women,

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about sex workers,

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about LGBTQ people.

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They appear in so many of his works as people who can be kind of easily forgotten

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about, let die.

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And I thought,

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you know,

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in his play,

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Richard’s Cork Leg,

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which I discussed there,

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that’s so evident in that story of a woman who died or was killed 100 years ago,

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a month - to the month,

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Honour Bright or

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Lizzie O’Neill,

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who is a sex worker in Dublin,

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he introduces that story in the play as a means of reminding us of how little the

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state is really paying service to that aspiration of the revolutionary period of

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cherishing all the children in the nation equally.

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ALANA GILLESPIE: My name is Alana Gillespie.

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I am a researcher on Flann O’Brien.

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Today I was chatting about uncanny perspectives in the work of Brian O’Nolan,

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of what’s at stake in when we encounter the uncanny or a moment of haunting.

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He just has such a way of making us notice things that we...that are there but not there.

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And I love the way that he makes us look at the basic reality around us to see that

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it’s not really basic at all (car starting) and quite complicated.

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But also at the same time, I think there’s still like...

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an element of... I find there’s something quite comforting.

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In it despite the

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MAEBH MURPHY: Yeah.

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ALANA GILLESPIE: quite disturbing aspects of some of our reality and the way that

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he’s trying to negotiate and make sense of...

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PASSER-BY: Well apparently according to Eoin it’s a fiver. A fiver too much!

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The way that he’s trying to make sense of a really quickly changing world in his

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own time with the clash of modernity and tradition and the way that he engages with

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that in an extremely critical fashion which is humorous and loving and unforgiving

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I think that makes him an absolutely fantastic writer.

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LOUISE BOYCE:

So my name is Louise Boyce. I’m the venue manager of the Alley Arts and Conference Centre here in Strabane. And we have just been delighted to host the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference in association with Strabane History Society and also Notre Dame University. It’s been such a pleasure to have hosted 40 delegates from 12 different countries over three days and it has been very special for our town here in Strabane and we hope all the delegates enjoyed being here as much as we enjoyed hosting them.

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MAEBH MURPHY: Definitely. And, can we get a rendition of Black is the Colour.

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LOUISE BOYCE: No, because (inaudible)

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(Laughter)

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MAEBH MURPHY: The conference came to a close on Friday night with a banquet at Oysters Restaurant.

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BRIAN O CONCUBHAIR: That’s it! Enjoy the meal!

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MICHAEL PIERSE: And congratulations to Brian!

(Applause)

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LOUISE BOYCE: And you won a prize for best book.

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JOE BROOKER: Oh yeah. He did.

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ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Comhghairdeas libh.

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Go raibh míle míle maith agat.

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ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Maith-thú féin.

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Go raibh maith agat.

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ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Maith go leor.

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BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Go raibh maith agat.

(Applause)

(00:25:18):

MAEBH MURPHY: That was Derry City and Strabane councillor Antoine Ó Fearghail, alongside Louise Boyce from the Alley, congratulating Brian Ó Conchubhair, who won Best Flann O’Brien monograph earlier in the week. Brian took the opportunity to interview Ó Fearghail, who expressed his appreciation for Flann O’Brien’s writing, discussed the author’s homeschooling as Gaeilge, and spoke on the growth of the Irish language in the town in his lifetime.

(00:25:40):

ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Bain muid an sult as an comhdháil seo. Rugadh anseo é agus ba choir duinn rúd mór a dhéanamh di agus údar agus scríobhneoir iontach tabhachtach é do mhuintir na hÉireann agus táimíd iontach bróidúil as...Bhí daoine eile ann but eisean an duine is mó a tá againn. Togadh le Gailig é - agus ta a fhios agam go raibh Béarla aige chomh maith but d’foghlaim siad Béarla déanaí. Cuireadh oideas orthu sa bhaile. Ni dheachaigh siad ar scoil anseo.

(00:26:16):

BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Tá an Alley Theatre ar fheabhas. Áit den chéad scoth. Conas go bhfuil áit chomh maith sin ag an mbaile?

(00:26:27):

ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: An bhfuil a fhios agat - taimíd iontach sásta agus iontach bródúil go bhfuil sé againn. Bíonn go leoir rudaí ann agus caitheameaid é a úsáid agus caitheamaid an Alley a ceiliúradh mar a deirtear.

(00:26:41):

BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Agus an ceist deireanach. Cé chomh láidir is atá an Gaeilge ar an Srath Bán faoi láthair?

(00:26:47):

ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Tá Gaelscoil anseo. Chuaigh mo chlannsa féin chuig an Gaelscoil. Agus tá an Gailig ag dul ó neart go neart. Blianta ó shin nuair a bhí mé ag fás anuas sa ceantar, ní mor an daoine ann a raibh Gaeilge acu. Anois, (?) Gaeilge a labhairt gach lá ar an Srath Bán. Sin mar atà cursaí anois. Tá ai

(00:27:07):

BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR: Iontach. Ar son an lucht na comhdháile, ar son Cumann Flann Uí Bhrían, go raibh míle maith agat as an bhfáilte chaoin iontach a cuireadh romhainn agus an baile a roinnt linn agus Oidhreacht Flann Uí Bhrian a roinnt - a ceiliúradh agus a roinnt linn.

(00:27:25):

ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Go dté sibh uilig slán. Tá súil agam go dtagann sibh ar ais.

BRIAN O CONCHUBHAIR: Tá mé dóchás.

MAEBH MURPHY: Is cinnte, is cinnte.

ANTAINE Ó FEARGHAIL: Go raibh maith agat.

BRIAN: Fáilte

(00:27:38):

MAEBH MURPHY: Thanks for listening. The final section now is a little compilation of delegates telling us one moment that stayed with them.

(00:27:46):

JOE BROOKER: There was a welcome from the mayor of Strabane last night to the conference and he spoke very precisely, very accurately about the conference and very generously as well about what it means to Strabane to have the conference here. So I really liked that. We’ve had music, we’ve had traditional music, we had a brass band and we’ve had marvellous keynotes. We had this incredible keynote today about geology and topography that was just so thought-provoking. So there’s a great deal to enjoy here.

(00:28:23):

ALANA GILLESPIE: Yeah, and some of the discussions about the geography has been quite interesting to me, about the catchment areas and what things would have been like for young Brian O’Nolan around the time of partition and things just changing, his sort of attention to borders and boundaries and different ways has been quite exciting to think about in this locality.

(00:28:47):

BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR:

The highlight for me, I think, is the day we were walking around the town. It was seeing the locals stop and kind of like look at the weirdos and then realising that there was this group of people who had come from the outside to their town to study, talk about their person. And in the pubs at night, there was a certain amount of...kind of like, are you mad? But there was a respect and there was a sense of pride amongst themselves, which only comes when somebody from the outside comes to study what you see every day. Really inspirational three days and lot of very exciting paper and people here from different countries aswell and I suppose one of the main things about this conference is that it has increased personal pride in the area.

(00:29:49):

JOE BROOKER: Perhaps I should have done, but I don’t think I’d ever quite realised what a Republican town Strabane was. Here we are at the very far west of the UK, near the border. It’s a very Republican town still, and you can see on the posters and the banners and things, even in the streets now. And it just helps you to give a little bit more background to thinking about Strabane. the politics in the background of the life of Flann O’Brien. I think that’s something that isn’t often mentioned.

(00:30:20):

MICHAEL PIERSE:

I was very touched by seeing, as he donated a painting, a family painting, to the collection here in the alley, Oisín brought to tears, Oisín, Flann’s nephew. And just what it meant to them to see this conference here, I thought, wow, that’s a particularly poignant moment. And for the family to see that recognition, it’s not often something that happens at an academic conference and it does suggest that maybe we should do more of those things.

(00:30:53):

MIKELYN ROCHFORD

both times that Michael Kennedy has spoken actually I just really enjoy hearing

(00:31:33):

about Strabane from the people who live there and it’s yeah I also come from a really you know rural little town like this so it’s nice to see that you know a big group of researchers and scholars and people who really love this author come here and one thing that really stands out to me about this conference as opposed to others that have been in bigger cities is just local participation which I think is really special

(00:31:23):

CATHERINE FLYNN:

For me, what’s most vivid in my memory right now is my conversation with Anne O’Nualláin, Micheál’s Ó Nualláin’s widow, and just hearing about her account of Michal and the kind of O’Nualláin genius, you know, this sort of vitality, idiosyncrasy that’s translated into artistic productivity and innovation.

(00:31:44):

DAVID O’KANE

But the one from today that really made a big impression was Brian’s about the Gormleys, because I knew that there was a great influence from that side of the family that hadn’t been explored, but just to hear the extent of it was incredible.

(00:32:00):

ALANA GILLESPIE:

I really enjoyed Brian’s chat when he was talking about the Gormleys. He’s such an impassioned speaker. You’d have him at the pulpit shouting. It was fantastic.

(00:32:15):

MAEBH MURPHY: You definitely want him on your side.

(00:32:17):

ALANA GILLESPIE: Absolutely. Get him fighting for you, that Kerry spirit.

(00:32:23):

HARUN ŠILJAK: I feel like the moment of the conference was just now in the previous session so for me I feel like Alana’s contribution really helped me put some my angles on the eerie stuff and her angles on the uncanny really meeting somewhere halfway and it’s giving me a whole new perspective and it gave me some really good material and it’s given me pretty much something to work on for the next while.

(00:32:57):

ELLIOT MILLS:

Yeah, I was interested in Brian Lambkin’s reading of At Swim Two Birds, which I think will change the way that I see the student narrator lying in his bed.

(00:33:10):

MAEBH MURPHY: The bard?

(00:33:12):

ELLIOT MILLS:

Yeah, the idea of going into the dark and composing in the dark in the bedroom so he’s not just a lazy student. He’s in the sort of bardic tradition. I was convinced by that, definitely, by the end.

(00:33:24):

MAEBH MURPHY: Yeah, me too.

(00:33:25):

JOE BROOKER:

A couple of speakers at the end there, Tess Burchmore and Elliot Mills, talking about magazines and journals and bringing back those kind of texts that are hidden away a bit and we don’t look at so much. And it’s great to hear that kind of research.

(00:33:42):

DOMINIC HARKIN:

I think maybe the panel that ended with us going round and each giving our first moments with Flann, how we got introduced to him. Either that or, I suppose, the evenings in the farmer’s home.

(00:33:58):

SÉAMUS MAC ANNAIDH:

Flan O’Brien has a lot of voices, and I think we heard this week that he’s now going to have a voice in Chinese, in Irish, and he’s been translated into Turkish. We heard a lot of voices coming here, different accents, and it’s great to think that Flann will be heard in many different languages across the world and obviously there are all sorts of challenges because he’s not a simple writer by any means he’s multi-layered every word he used every phrase there’s all sorts of different dynamics going on but it was very refreshing to see that the people who were translating him into other languages were aware of this we’re so much nowadays, we have Google Translate, we have AI and all this sort of thing to really translate literature of this sort it has to be a personal engagement it has to be a personal understanding of the different levels of what’s going on the word metafiction was used quite a lot in this conference and that’s exactly what he was writing it’s not like translating a legal text or something like that there has to be the human engagement.

(00:35:13):

MAEBH LONG:

I liked Emily’s post-colonial engagement, and I thought bringing it back to Connemara, and I thought the very idea of a cigire complex is a really useful phrase. I don’t know if Emily quite knows what she has with that. I think she put it together kind of playfully. But I think that idea of... kind of situating O’Nolan quite specifically in a post-colonial Gaeltacht experience and thinking through the ramifications that he’s talking about kind of both in the Béal Bocht kind of early 20th century period but also looking at how that still was playing out in the 1980s in terms of the cigire coming in and this kind of obligation that children kind of kind of lie a little bit or bend the truth was a really interesting kind of widening, I suppose, of the impacts of An Béal Bocht in contemporary Ireland. And I liked her connection aswell to Kneecap.

(00:36:07):

EMILY RIDGE:

Everyone wanted to deepen their understanding in a very open way. It’s a very vibrant but welcoming community and you really kind of feel that when you’re in it and a great sense of kind of learning from each other in the kind of process of trying to understand like this very complex literary figure.

(00:36:32):

BRIAN: I mean, tá mé an an sásta go bhfuilimid anseo. I mean, luíonn sé le réasún agus le ciall go mbheidh comhdháil Bhrian Uí Nualláin - an Nualláinaigh ar an Srath Bán, an áit inar togadh é, an áit ina raibh conaí ar a mhuintir - an áit ar fhil sé go meon agus go minic agus an áit ar tumach é sa Ghaeilge agus i gcultúr na Gaeilge. I mean, cen áit eile a raghaidh seachas Tír Eoghain?

(00:37:00):

(inaudible)

(inaudible)

PASSER-BY: (inaudible)

HARUN ŠILJAK: Brendan Behan singing Irish ballads.

Credits:

Recording, editing, mixing and transcription by Maebh Murphy (Cheasty)

Additional mixing and mastering by David Murphy