St. Patrick's Day, 2010 - Kinvara.

The seaside village of Kinvara boasts a literary group which I started up some years ago and which continues today, and which invited several well-known Irish poets to read, among them Noel Monahan. It's as easy to hear Cajun music as Irish traditional music in the village nowadays. The closing and then demolition of the historic Winkles Hotel and Pub, coupled later with the closing of The Plaid Shawl pub, killed off a vital heart-beat of traditional music and dancing in the village. Paid gigs rather than open-house sessions have, as in Galway City, taken over. Not far up the road, in the direction the camera here is pointing, is the historic Doorus House, launch-pad for the Irish National Theatre, but which today is a youth hostel. Similarly a few miles away, Thoor Ballylee, reconstructed home of the poet W.B.Yeats, is a gift-shop, with the Irish tourist authorities successfully resisting any offer to bring writers to read there and make the place a living literary presence. Coole Park does host a lively cultural diary and the village of Gort, Co. Galway, has its annual 'The Forge at Gort' literary festival, this year running March 26 and 27th, organised by the Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude; in spite of the Centre being up and running for eight years it's development (as a museum to commemorate the region's literary heritage, a reading room and administrative centre) is inexplicably opposed by the Arts Office of Galway City Council! {www.twwc.ie} Many musicians from various parts of the world, including artists and a sprinkling of writers, live in or near Kinvara, which also has a small market.