Poetry Vomit and Pleasure - from London

Bloomsbury Coffee House – was a real pleasure to visit while in London on the weekend despite long delays in the delivery of delicious porridge with a compote of prunes and apricots. It allowed time to check e-mails and read the Sunday paper headlines.  I’ve decided to cook up a compote to have on hand for breakfasts in future. My first treat in this regard was in Folyle’s Hotel, Clifden, Co. Galway, where it was a rhubarb and ginger sauce. It was Sunday morning in London though and the place was packed. The ambience was full of character and kept us entertained - and maybe the new body in the kitchen was not yet quite up to speed. My daughter thought the avocado on gluten free toast was to die for.

     In terms of design if you want to know how to make a lower basement look great this is a good place to visit. The old metal window frames remain intact. I hadn’t seen similar windows for a while. They reminded me of the home I grew up in. It’s amazing just how long a building can retain its authenticity when well looked after. White paint with shades of grey – and the bathroom which could have been disaster was an enjoyable visit with a concrete floor painted light grey and just a few lively tiles and a mirror reflecting such light as was available.  The white yard with the steps down to the entrance painted red let plenty of light into the larger two room

s of the coffee house.

     Then, naturally, I met the Irish language poet, Louis de Paor, outside - en passant. He also lives in Galway. You couldn’t visit London for a few days and not come across someone from home. He was gracious in being accosted with a ‘hi from Galway’ – just couldn’t resist it!

 

  http://juddbooks.com/  82 Marchmont Street, London

     Judd Books, justly proud of it it’s used academic books, was just around the corner from the coffee house. It didn’t open until noon on Sunday but then I had a good browse through their quality selection – both on the ground floor and downstairs - once I’d received a clothes peg receipt for the bag I’d to leave at the desk. There were large books I’d have liked but then I’d have had to carry them around so I settled for Kid, the Simon Armitage collection of poetry from Faber and Faber that ‘won the inaugural Forward \prize for Best First Collection in 1992’. I have to admit I bought it because two of the poems made me chuckle. When I flicked through it later on I discovered Not the Furniture Game within – a poem Kevin Higgins had recently given out in the Skylight Poets writing forum in the Galway Arts Centre as a writer’s prompt (great for encouraging metaphors) and that I had left on my kitchen table before leaving home in readiness for the Monday night group meeting Having the Conversation – About Celebration. I was suggesting it celebrates language. It evoked a powerful reaction in the group – for most it was overwhelming, an overabundance of metaphor, too prolific a list and insufficiently clear in its meaning. Just the kind of poem I need for the Conversation group using poetry to provoke discussion. ‘This is not a poem,’ allowing us to try to establish what criteria it doesn’t fit and whether they are in fact the criteria we want to use in evaluating a poem. Not something we could establish. Just the kind of meat and drink required. It made one participant want to vomit, for the same reason – too much. I love the poem, the cascade of language and metaphor and I wish my 'one-liners were footballs through other people's windows'. It was an evening of visceral poetry with quite a few lists including Bertholdt Brecht’s To Eat of Meat Joyously and Pleasures following on from Chana Bloch’s Rising To Meet It, a poem seen initially to be about childbirth but, taking the third stanza into account (controversial in this discussion for being included for which, again, I was thankful) more a celebration of woman’s warrior-ship invigorated by the wisdom and intuition of the body. Lines from Rising to Meet It and from Armitage’s Gooseberry Season, also found in his book, are now displayed on my Twitter title @susanhlindsay.

       Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre www.matildathemusical.com/, on Friday night was a disappointment. We should have known it didn’t augur well when three adults and a child clamboured over us to aisle seats they could have reached without discomfiting anyone. The man of the party who stood with his umbrella all but spiking my stomach and his case blocking my knees while the rest of his company flaffed around making it impossible for me to resume my seat for so long that I had eventually to ask him if he’d mind making space to enable me to sit again should have been a further warning of what was to come. The Grand Circle seats were stacked high. Despite that, at one stage a man of the party climbed over to swop seats with a child in the row before during the first Act, the ultimate distraction after continual talking and movement among the party who appeared to be explaining everything to the children as it took place, not in whispers but in loud continuous mutter and even singing along at one stage. Then the men who were now sitting together began to talk to each other.

     Initially was in sympathy with the possible need to settle the children in. But when I realised I’d missed a significant section of the first half of the performance and was no longer clear as to what was happening, that the seats had cost us sixty pounds, that others paid considerably more and our whole trip from Ireland had been initially motivated by a wish to see the event, hear the music, enjoy memories of the Dahl characters and see the children who would bring them to life it became really annoying. The usherette shushed them and stood at the end of the lines they occupied for most of the performance. Eventually I added my own entreaties. In the interval my daughter pointed out that people from all the surrounding seats had shushed and given glowering looks in the hope of enjoying the show but to no avail. In fact the group appeared entirely oblivious to the needs of anyone around them. In the interval those who had not already moved along to fill the few empty surrounding seats did so as we did. But it was too late to still fully appreciate and enjoy the show although we did what we could. I am not sure what language the group spoke so maybe they did come from a culture that doesn’t value silence in the theatre. It wouldn’t encourage me to travel to another London show, too much at stake when audience members can’t be trusted to allow others enjoy their night out.

    I can’t tell you much about the performance. It is quite amazing to see such young performers deliver such professional performances that you forget they are children and want to judge them on the same terms as everyone else and they certainly did deliver such performances. Overall I thought it was a little mechanical and had lost some sparkle. The artifice of delivering the storyline through Matilda telling it her local librarian and saviour didn’t seem to quite work but having been so distracted and trying to deal with the disappointment – not least because I knew how much my daughter wanted to enjoy it - I am in no position to judge. 

Our Sunday afternoon trip down the Thames to Greenwich did not disappoint. The sun came out while we were on the river and it was all the more appreciated for its absence earlier.

The Elephant in the Room at Corrib Toastmasters is No Weed.

 

    

‘…And I still don’t know what that elephant in the room is all about’ was the General Evaluator's conclusion to the Corrib Toastmasters meeting on Tuesday 8th March, 2016 - at the Maldron Hotel in Oranmore, Co. Galway - having begun with a comment on an atmosphere of giddiness on the night. She was to find out.

     The giddy tone may have been set when the Toastmaster of the night invited members to attend his wedding celebration. He is to marry the man who is already his civil partner. This time last year he was working on a jigsaw of maps on the kitchen floor in preparation to for Vote Yes in Co.Mayo in the campaign to legalise marriage for all in the Irish Constitution that was passed and came into law at the end of 2015. 

       

     The meeting proper having begun: the first speech made a cogent case for legalising medicinal marijuana. The liveliness was brought to earth as the speaker described the far more dangerous drugs and two year waiting list for spinal pain relief injections involved in managing personal chronic pain. Her concluding hope that by the time medicinal marijuana is legalised she will no longer need it was upbeat.

     From euphoria – the grammarian’s word of the evening that each speaker is invited to use – to the bread the next speaker has discovered it’s a pleasure to bake. Personal Oscars were awarded during the third speech. His Stage Five speech would be evaluated in relation to use of body language and expression. No question about able use of facial expression when this speaker taunted the Mayo team followers with his Oscar for the Galway team winning thrice in a row – glee and humour clear in a winning smile and sparkling eyes. His final winner is a Nun whose seventy-fourth he recently attended. In her ‘retirement’ she teaches mindfulness to people recovering from addiction.

    ‘I thank God that I have always had the gift of a great deal of energy’ the final speaker, working on an advanced speaking programme, began. He had needed it in the early in his married life while working in Australia on a major construction project. He broke his leg, his brand new machinery, worth around a hundred thousand, became bogged in a swamp as did the recovery efforts and vehicles. Three days of dogged persistence got it out. Exhausted he got home, only to discover that a close family member was critically ill in his hospital. The speech’s evaluator summed it up: ‘Resilience best describes the underlying theme of this speech’.

    Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break was the end poem read with exceptionally beautiful pacing. The reader contributed a welcome reflective pause before the final reports and evaluation asking about the elephant at back of the room. It may well accompany the Corrib Toastmasters in the St. Patrick’s Day Galway parade. Who’ll walk with the club? How can you miss that? 

Note. Corrib Toastmasters can be found at www.corrib.toastmastersclub.org

With Creative Devotion The Truly Profane Becomes Sacred

Whatever You Do With Devotion Is Sacred

Devote yourself to whatever, artistic or other, project and you imbue it with the sacred. The spirits attend. The muse shows up. Bali dancers, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s recounting of a tale, told to her by her teacher, in her latest book Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear - adapted their dancing to suit the ideas of high-minded Western visitors who could only see the sacred as separate from profane. They left their sacred dances in the temples, danced - newly adapted forms considered a more suitable representation - in beach bars until they grew into such beautiful and sacred forms that they, in turn, transformed and re-invigorated the original temple dances and the dance goes on.

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/elizabeth-gilbert-big-magic1.jpg

    

Create With Devotion

       Gilbert’s book demonstrates the importance of showing up: the value of making an act of devotion and giving attention to some inkling of a possibility -  devoting yourself to fanning the development of the spark of an idea or impulse. 

Intention

      That notice of intention becomes the intent that signals the muse or spirit. It is their invitation to attend. Your act of devotion, by demonstrating intention to embark on a creative project, however frail its promise, is the starting point for artistic endeavour and true creativity.

For more on creativity and Elizabeth Gilbert see the link above and her inspiring TED talks.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/elizabeth_gilbert

People Power

     A photo shared on social media; beds offered in homes.  Bob Geldof’s offer to do the same thing on radio. Politicians catch the change in mood, change their own attitude, and act in accord.

     A thousand or more people elect to disregard false promise when their train journey doesn’t take them over the border. One man, with a megaphone, entreats his fellow desperate not to submit but to get to their feet and walk - and continues until they join him one by one. 

     The walking thousand – this time on a busy motorway - continue in hope and then the buses come, take them to a destination of hope.

     In the early 1980’s I attended a Conference in Amsterdam, titled The Spirit of Peace. The Assistant Secretary General of the UN told the assembly that people work for years to get to the top of organisations where they believe they will have power to change things. When they get there they realise they are relatively powerless, come to realise the real power is back where they came from.

    The world depends on us.

‘Cleared of wrongdoing.’ Expedient scapegoating? What Values does Ireland Want to Uphold - Leadership Questions posed by Micheal Martin and Enda Kenny.

What do the Taoiseach’s response to the Fennelly Report and an Opposition Leader, Micheal Martin’s, response last week to questions raised by the PSI, Northern Ireland, as to whether the IRA still exists have in common? And what does the RTE documentary on the training of Army Recruits have to add?

     Did the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, show presidential style leadership in 2014 in the midst of revelatory reports, official and unofficial, that were unravelling trust in the Department of Justice and the Gardai? Or did he overstep his brief while demonstrating more of the technical ethics – where the rule but not the spirit of the law is honoured – we have come to expect in public life: an expectation that continues to erode confidence in Irish and International politics?

     As with our eroding coastline that - where possible - continues to be restored when funding and the political will allows, when the erosion has gone too far nothing can be done except to shore up what remains. This is a dangerous business. When law and order breaks down it’s a long road back to restoring sufficient trust in politics to build peace.

     The slow and frustrating road to that restoration is something Micheal Martin should know about. He was a Minister in successive Fianna Fail governments engaged in the painfully slow peace process required to enable a return to the rule of an elected Northern Ireland Assembly.  Those in the front-line of organisations who took up arms (whether you call it terrorism or war) when they no longer believed the political system could, or had the stomach to, deliver an adequately just society had to be particularly patient. They had to act with painstaking attention to detail as they both negotiated peace and led their former – or present, at the time – organisations to continue to take steps for peace and to put their trust in politics instead of the bullet.

     Ironically, it may have been the now relatively normal context that led a Senior Northern Ireland police officer to choose the words he did last week, rather than the more carefully phrased sentences that have come since - familiar over the long years of a return to peace in Northern Ireland.  The Statement from a member of the PSI (Police Service in Northern Ireland) that the IRA was still in existence to a degree and that members are suspects in the investigation of a murder might not have been phrased that way in the immediate winning of a return to politics and the putting beyond use of weaponry held by the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries. 

     

     The remains of an organisation, now with strong criminal elements, is not at all the same thing as the former organisation itself. It is generally understood that former members of all the paramilitaries have variously turned to active politics or to criminality, while others have retired entirely. The failure to spend enough money to resolve the societal inequities that fed the violence or to put in place sufficient processes to help to resolve grievances and grief after years of atrocities made that inevitable. It was nothing new that one of them might be a suspect in a criminal investigation. A suggestion that the paramilitary organisation, the IRA, was back in existence was however entirely new and a grave threat to the peace. It was surprising that the PSI Chief Constable backed up his Officer. His careful statement was never going to be fully reported after the first instance. He should have been less equivocal. Again, it appears he was not as fully conscious of the political dangers as former incumbents of the post might have been.

     Micheal Martin rushed to compound that failure to duly regard politics with his expedient use of a shorthand sound-bite. It was political opportunism at its worst. There was no need to repeat the inaccuracy. He could have added critical clarification. But it served to score a point against a Sinn Fein he now has to compete against for votes in the election next year. I have been impressed by his leadership of a party struggling to make a comeback. His success so far has been impressive but last week I knew nothing had changed. The old politics are still in place. Expediency rules.

     In Ireland and many States, the call from all sides for a renewal of political structures to rebuild the trust that polls and low turnouts on polling day suggest has been badly eroded is pointless if the attitudes at the heart of the problem prevail. One could even argue that if the attitudes changed (and research shows that it is attitudes that are foremost in deciding behaviour and change) the need for structural change would be significantly reduced. 

     I hate Joan Burton’s statement that the Taoiseach has been ‘cleared of wrongdoing’ by the Fennelly Report. It may have been the required political sound-bite but it stinks of expediency. It avoids all mention of the fine line he was traversing. We will never know the ins and outs of the responsibility the Garda Commisioner in the Republic, who retired early last year, has for what was going on in a culture that increasinglyseems to be the norm throughout the organs of the State. It could be argued that with all the emerging controversies arising from his time in office he ought to retire early. But we do not have a culture of people resigning when the perception of things happening under their watch turn sour. Wasn’t that what politicians used to do? Doesn’t that make the Garda Commissioner a scapegoat? The Taoiseach can no longer have trusted the Minister for Justice or he wouldn’t have gone over his head, but it was the Commissioner he felt should be informed that he might no longer be able to tell his Cabinet he could put his trust in. If he hadn’t been put in such an untenable position, the Garda Chief could have retired anyway – in protest at the behaviour of the political establishment. Maybe that is what has happened.

     I watched with initial horror the bullying tactics and expletives, totally unacceptable in any other workplace, deployed to train the Irish Army recruits on RTE television’s documentary (11th & 12th Sept, 2015). I refused to allow myself give in to an urgent desire to change channels. Some of the recruits laughed in the first instance. It was so ridiculous it was laughable. I smiled myself, remembering going to a Secretarial College and wanting to laugh when the teacher called on ‘Miss Harris and Miss …’ to ‘stand up’ for speaking to each other in class. Even in the 1970s, (I was brought up in rather privileged circumstances, given I was sent to a liberal school)I hadn’t seen anyone being asked to ‘Stand up’ for misbehaviour since First Class in National School. But the Sergeant was serious and she made it very clear by further expletives and demands backed up by the Lieutenant and other Officers.

    The would-be soldiers were given the justification that discipline is essential. It became clear that attention to detail – taught through attending to details of uniform and dress, no button could be out of place – and the developing of an inbuilt automatic response to follow an order could save their life, or that a fellow soldier, within  a couple of years. The runner up for best recruit of the year was an exceptional  woman recruit who may have been pipped at the post because she answered back under the extreme conditions, and for the first time in seventeen weeks, on a week-long training exercise out in the mountains. It doesn’t augur well for overcoming groupthink in the Army. I presume they’d argue first things first: there isn’t time when lives are at risk to have soldiers questioning orders.

     If the attention to detail required by our soldiers was required in politics, or in other parts of the civil service and in civilian life in general, we might be living in a very different country and not find ourselves in the straits we’re in. However groupthink and the kind of discipline that doesn’t allow questions or critical thinking is antithetical to what is required for creative and just solutions to problems.

     One has to ask if it’s still appropriate in the times we live in to train soldiers with bullying and expletives. I find it hard to believe we can’t do a whole lot better. Nevertheless, if I were a soldier looking at the shenanigans of the political leaders in whose hands their lives are ultimately held I’d be concerned. Without soldiers and Gardai the State has no power and can’t uphold any values. If we are going to teach our armed forces to be disciplined we had better all be disciplined in taking care of the values and peace we are asking them to help us to uphold. Nightly we see the refugees fleeing the breakdown of politics and the chaos of war. On an international scale, it has never been clearer that we need to build and take care of the peace. Politics is critical in that care. We don’t need a new politics we need a renewal in politics. We need our leaders to take leadership in demonstrating the values in their own behaviour that we want to ask our soldiers to risk their lives to uphold for the Nation.

Low Rate of Irish Divorce. Is Austerity a Factor?

Opening Night of  Love & Marriage Revisited 

The Merriman Summer School, 2015.

     Former Supreme Judge, Catherine McGuinness,  blamed her love of the Culwick Choir - in which she continues to sing alongside the publicist for the Merriman Summer School - and her former husband’s association with the Merriman, for her invitation to Open the 2015 School last night, at Glor Theatre in Ennis, Co. Clare. Her commitment to working towards divorce legislation over a sustained period was mentioned twice from the floor - to applause from the audience. Those members staying in the Old Grand Hotel will be able to update their knowledge of the bible, she quipped, as there is a related seminar on offer there. She got a further laugh when she quoted the Church of Ireland Gazette, saying she is member of that church, 'I know you all read it weekly!'

      The first law allowing for Maintenance for women whose husbands are no longer with them was passed in 1976, the year after I graduated as a social worker. Listening to her mention of other laws passed, after long and arduous campaigns, was like listening to the social history of my lifetime to date. By the time the second Referendum on divorce was passed in 1995, by a small majority,  most of the legislation needed to sustain separated couples was already in place.

    This may account for the significantly low rate of divorce in Ireland. Tom Fahey, Professor of Social Policy at UCD School of Applied Social Science demonstrated that the peak came in the first few years afterwards. If the people who had already separated by the time divorce was available here were the only ones to have divorced since, it would account for the figures.

    Along with Spain and Italy, we are the only country to have a two-step process to divorce. The requirement that couples be separated first for a period of at least four years may be a deterrent. In the first instance because Separation Agreements need to be made (although they are not legally required) to enable couples to put some sort of arrangements in place for that period. They may not wish to re-visit those often hard won agreements lest conflict re-emerges and unnecessary difficulties are raised. There may be no real need for divorce until one party wants to re-marry, Judge McGuinness suggested.

    Members of the audience pointed out that the economic difficulties of recent years make it extremely difficult to contemplate divorce, or even separation. Living apart may not be a viable economic possibility. Another indicated research suggesting that austerity is putting severe pressure on marriages in Ireland. As the legislative details of divorce law were put into the Constitution rather than allowed for in accompanying legislation they would be very difficult to change here. We do, however, have a fairly liberal law – no-fault divorce – once the long separation period been seen through. Professor Tom Fahey pointed out that findings in relation to the reasons for such a low divorce rate in recent years are ambiguous. It is hard to ascertain the reason, particularly in the context of International comparisons. Italy and Spain have low rates also.

    I was sorry to hear, from a local Co. Clare solicitor trained in Mediation, that a lot of couples still do not go for mediation before engaging in what inevitably is an adversarial process once both parties have their separate lawyers. My own separation was amicably agreed with my former husband. We waited till quite late on to engage the advised separate lawyers (to ensure neither could later claim later they weren’t advised) and move on to arrange a divorce to ensure we didn’t get adversarial – at least until our children were further grown up. It worked for us but it’s not ideal. Once a third party – a potential new spouse for one partner is involved – things could get more complicated. The divorcing spouse wanting to re-marry could find themselves with conflicting loyalties. Mediation is by far the best route to follow if at all possible.

     Dr. Linda Connolly is Director of this year’s School. She is Chair of the Irish Social Sciences Platform and  a member of the Royal Irish Academy Social Sciences Committee.  She is a Sociologist and Director of the Institute for Social Science in the 21^st Century  (ISS21) at UCC.

     The Merriman School continues until Sunday to consider the topic Love and Marriage Revisited through literature, sociology, history and music. You can attend individual events or join the school. 

You can book at www.glor.ie . 

More information  is available at: www.merriman.ie / eolas@merriman.ie

Rising to the Challenge of Summer.

Solos – whether living, working or otherwise alone - need to be just as creative as parents occupying children, double as much if you’re child-minding alone as well.

At the gates of a play-school last year I met a Grandmother, child-minding for the summer. She was visiting from England and lamenting the absence of activity groups to join. ‘Every group I contact has stopped for the summer months.’ I recommended investigating the Meet-Up site online but, living alone myself, I fully appreciated the challenge she was facing. At least her adult family would return home in the evenings but they’d have their own commitments. She needed a life of her own – temporarily in suspension across the Irish Sea - to complement child-minding and acting adjunct to her younger family, so busy themselves they’d be unlikely to fully appreciate her difficulties which could lead to problems. She could quickly find herself isolated, or at odds with the family she had come to assist with little left to contribute in terms of company after a day of child-minding alone.

Solo, whether through living alone, working alone from home, recently: retired, widowed separated, with a spouse working away or simply absent with their own activities – is a challenge to rise to if you are not to disappear into yourself and feel body-less. Without the synergy of engaging with others, as interested in you as themselves as you collectively engage in a shared enterprise, it takes a lot of creative energy to simply keep on track. Don’t dismiss that as valueless. This creative engagement can have you more consciously weaving life than those who are more engaged. It would be worse were there no challenge to keep you creative. This realisation is a good place to start.

Setting up a structure that works for your day and week, once you’ve practised it for a while, will save you from wasting energy. President Obama bought suits of only two colours, with matching ties for each, when he began his presidency. He wouldn’t have the time or energy to be daily deciding on clothes. I’ve also taken this advice from a seasoned solo traveller heard on radio before I took my first trip away alone to Rome a few weeks ago. ‘Decide beforehand what you will do when you get there, give yourself an itinerary -otherwise, when you arrive, you won’t bother and find yourself wandering aimlessly’. It worked a treat. Tired from simply getting there, it was great to have sought out the city tourist travel bus before I’d even left the station on arrival and to take it up next day without effort. All that was left to decide was where to get off and when to get back on!

Exercise needs to be part of your structure. A daily walk, tai chi or yoga exercises or whatever you fancy yourself. At the worst of times: movement of any kind is a first step back on track – even if it’s walking across the kitchen and stretching before you put the kettle on. Already your brain is re-activated. I love Julia Cameron’s idea of Artist Dates – from the book The Artist’s Way. Choose to visit or do something you wouldn’t normally select and go there, or go somewhere that will stimulate your creative side - and don’t think about creativity as something that is only for artists, it is not. Engage in a project: make something or learn. Wellbeing research indicates that anything that absorbs you to self-forgetfulness leverages happiness and August is a good time to visit special events and put a toe in new waters.

‘Power poses,’ I’ve been known to chant as a mantra on occasions. The research indicating that people who have taken power stances before interviews – hands on hips, leaning on a table with your hands, or punching the air – instead of only sitting curled over to surf the internet on a smart phone before being questioned, not only performed better in their interview but felt better too. Their cortisol levels, associated with stress, were down and testosterone levels up leaving them more sense of agency and action.

Smile, it changes your brain chemistry and there is something to be said for the old adage about the world smiling with you but I wouldn’t rely on it. You need company and it is good to do everything you can to find it but failing that there’s a lot to enjoy and, meanwhile, you’re building resilience, toning muscles readiness to rise to your next challenge – maybe the new group you’ll join in September or the skill you’ll take to the next level when you add it to the familiar friends and activities you enjoy during the rest of the year.