Soundings Culture Night event at Athy Library

CAPELLA Productions staged a unique and emotive event in the Athy Community Library on Culture Night recently, facilitated by the library’s wonderful library staff.

‘Soundings’ was devised and produced by David Walsh and featured a wealth of local talent in this nostalgic and original performance.

In 1967 Professor Augustine Martin was commissioned by the Department of Education to produce a collection of poetry for use in all secondary schools. The book produced was entitled ‘SOUNDINGS’ and it was used in Irish schools from 1969 up until 2000. The collection passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students over the 30 years.

‘Soundings’ was published by Gill and Macmillan and Longmans Browne and Nolan. The book, with its iconic green and blue cover, featured poems by, among others, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot John Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Emily Dickenson, Yeats, Kavanagh, Dylan Thomas and Austin Clarke.

So popular was the book that Gill and MacMillan re-issued it in 2010, and it spent several weeks in the bestseller's list. The event in Athy Library brought together a group of people who had studied the poetry collection in secondary school.

Each person was given the opportunity to read their favourite poems from the collection and share with the audience the reason for selecting the poems; It was this sharing of memory and stories that made the night so unique, the personal stories shared by the performers resonated with so many of the huge audience who attended, ‘there were a lot of tears shed on the night’.

Stories of childhood on country lanes looking for birds’ nests, remembrance of times spent with an Irish emigrant in her last days in a hospital in London in the 1970s. The smell of boot polish and rashers while listening to Ciaran Mac Mathuna on Radio Eireann on a Sunday morning, recounting stories of saying the rosary and stifling the giggles kneeling on the flagged limestone kitchen floor and the rambling house that welcomed the neighbours in a time long past.

John O’Neill was making his first theatrical appearance since starring in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in the Halla Mor in 1973, Pascal Lacey and Mary Kirwan flew the flag for Laois in two stellar performances. Mary English’s rendition of Cill Aodain was a throwback to her Mayo homeland. Gerard Holohan was munificus in his delivery of the Charles Baudelaire poem ‘Be Drunk’. Aideen Treacy gave us the wonderful Francis Ledwidge poem ‘June’, while her fellow Kilmeade neighbour, Pamela Harpur, brought a reflective silence to the auditorium with her reading of the Louis Mac Niece poem ‘Prayer before Birth’.

Des Dalton’s sonorous tones recited from Patrick Kavanagh and the epic poem ‘Caoch the Piper’. Ber Mc Evoy was making her first appearance with Capella Productions and read from Henry Vaughan and the evocative poem Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney.

David Walsh read The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot, which he dedicated to his former English teacher Mattie White, the man who was the inspiration for the show.

Dominic Doody sang and played songs of the era throughout the show and his contribution was central to the success of the night.

The audience in the library were treated to a memorable evening of poetry, music and musings and they showed their appreciation to the performers with a wonderful ovation at the end of the night.