The Western Writers Centre

Tourists, musicians, local people - Galway streets were filled yesterday, Sunday, in a period of good weather following torrential showers. The air was full of music, dancing, face-painting - and poems! For the second time The Western Writers’ Centre distributed free poems, beautifully printed up and designed by I-Supply, Galway, featuring work by Colette Nic Aodha, Gerry McDonnell and Geraldine Mills. “People were quite pleasantly amazed to see they were being offered contemporary poetry, free of charge, outside the confines of readings and so forth,” said the Centre’s Manager, Fred Johnston. “Isn’t it a nice thing, to be offered a poem in the middle of the day?”

- anyone for poetry? WWC Company Secretary, Sylvia Crawford, with a poem by Dublin writer, Gerry McDonnell, outside Galway’s Mediaeval Market.

- pomes (less than a) pennyeach, Mr Joyce: Fred Johnston after the flood

While attending the recent Nairn Book and Arts festival near Inverness (see Kiosque!) it behoved some of us to take a trip to the battlefield at Culloden, now served by a brand-new interpretive centre, which, equipped with café, store, historical displays - some of terrifying force - would take an entire day properly to navigate. Poignant indeed was the trip over the flat battlefield itself to note the Highlander and Government battle-lines. There were, of course, Irish men there too, and the testimony of a Kerry-born soldier can be listened to in the centre. The lie about glory in war is amply testified to by realising that, in one tiny spot on the field a few feet square, no fewer than 700 men died in less than three minutes. Can poets and song-writers make sense of such slaughter? And what is the purpose of war poetry?

- for a’ that: cottage on Culloden moor used as a dressing-station by Government forces. Highland troops attacked from roughly the left-hand corner of the picture. (c) Litpix.

**************************************************