​Sagarmatha at L’Atitude 51°, 1 Union Quay, Cork 7pm on 6th 7th and 8th June 2017.
 
Sagarmatha, also known as 'Mount Everest'.
The Everest mountain range used to be an ocean bed/ coastline, elevated by the collision of tectonic plates of the Indian continent and Asia, closing the Tethys Ocean, which no longer exists apart from sedimentary rocks.
Harry Moore and Kathy D’Arcy spent some time walking in the Himalayas shortly before the earthquakes in 2015.
 
'Sagarmatha' a performed narrative, fuses their separate experiences into an immersive multimedia performance, celebrating the dangerous beauty of the highest place in the world, its people and its sometimes unprepared visitors . . .
 
 
 
Tickets €5 at the door 
Please note no late admissions.

My poem 'Probably Misuse of Shamanism' is in this anthology, which will be launched at 7pm in the Teacher's Club, 36 Parnell St West, Dublin, on February 22nd:

EDITED by Eugene O’Connell and Pat Boran
FOREWORD by Bernard O’Donoghue
In The Deep Heart’s Core some 100 Irish poets accept the invitation to revisit a favourite, key or touchstone poem of their own, and offer a short commentary on same — as they might at a live event.  The result is both an ideal introduction to contemporary Irish poetry for the general reader and a handbook for the aspiring practitioner or student.

More info at ​https://dedaluspress.com/product/the-deep-hearts-core/

*Ages ago*
ME: Hi, can I make an appointment to meet *TD's name* please?

THEM: Oh, the minister is very busy at the moment.

ME: That's okay.  When might I be able to make an appointment?

THEM: *names date*

ME: Thanks!

THEM: Erm, what's it in connection with?

ME: Erm, women's health?

THEM: Okaaaaay.

*Day before appointment*
THEM: Hi, is that Kathy?

ME: Yes.

THEM: I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone your appointment, the minister is very busy.  

ME: That's okay.  When can I reschedule for?

THEM: *names date the following week*

ME: Thanks!

THEM: Erm, what's it in connection with?

ME: Erm, women's health?

THEM: Okaaaaaaaaaaaay.

*Several hours before appointment*
THEM: Hi, is that Kathy?

ME: Yes.

THEM: I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone your appointment, the minister is very busy.  

ME: That's okay.  When can I reschedule?

THEM: *names date the following week*

ME: Thanks!

THEM: Erm, what's it in connection with?

ME: Erm, women's health?

THEM: Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

*Day before appointment*
THEM: Hi, is that Kathy?

ME: Yes.

THEM: I'm afraid I'm going to have to postpone your appointment, the minister is very busy.

ME: *sigh* That's okay.  When can I reschedule for?

THEM: *names date at end of same week*

ME: Thanks!

THEM: Erm, what's it in connection with?

ME: Erm, women's health?

THEM: Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

*Day and time of appointment*
ME: Hi, I'm here to meet *TD's name*.

THEM: I'm afraid the minister is absent at present.  Would you like to speak to me?

ME: Okay.  Will he be long?

THEM: Oh he won't be in today.

ME: What??

THEM: He won't be in today.  Would you like to speak to me and I can pass it on?

ME: No!  I had an appointment with *TD's name*!  Why didn't you call me?  I have a job I've taken time out of!

THEM: I tried to call you...

ME *makes a show of taking out phone, checking for missed calls*  Did you try to call me?

THEM: Erm let me check... *fiddles with computer, reads list of missed appointments to self* okay sorry about that.

ME: So can you tell me why you didn't call me?

THEM: Sorry about that.

ME: Can I reschedule?

THEM: Well the minister is actually away next week, and then it's the summer break, so it'll be at the end of the summer.

ME: That's unacceptable.  That's really disrespectful behaviour.  We're constituents.

​THEM: Sorry about that.

Maria Lappin and I will perform this piece again:
at Clonakilty Community Arts Centre on Friday Aug 19th from 7.30;
​in the Franciscan Well, Cork city, on Monday Sep 5th from 7.30pm.
Both performances will follow launch readings of Tina Pisco's new book 'Sunrise Sunset.'
Come along and spread the word!

ABOUT THIS IS MY CONSTITUTION:
A few years ago while researching in the National Archives I came across a file in the archive of the Department of the President.  The file contained De Valera's draft constitution, and all of the letters written to him and to the Irish Press by excellent Irish women from all walks of life, begging the then Taoiseach to remove the sexist wording which threatened women's ability to work and even to full citizenship.  The file contained not a single written reply from De Valera, and the worst of the wording is still in our constitution to this day.  The file also contained defamatory editorials from the Irish Press seeking (no doubt at the then government's behest) to undermine the women, as well as arse-licking and downright frightening letters in support of 'sending women back to the home where they belong.'  The final document was a Department of Finance memorandum from the period listing the civil service jobs which women couldn't do: this one really has to be heard to be believed!

I made a short play from the documents so that I could let the women's voices be heard again and until their demands are finally met.  Also, because I don't think we should ever forget exactly how much our government has hated women and continues to enact and support woman-hating legislation.  The last time the piece was performed was at a parliamentary briefing for TDs and senators in Dáil Eireann during the Constitutional Convention.  

If you are interested in hearing these women speak again, come to Ma Murphy's pub in Bantry on Thursday July 21st at 7pm: FREE EVENT.   And please spread the word!  The more of us who listen to women like these, the better for everyone.

The event will be followed by music and a book launch by Tina Pisco. 

Perforum is an annual performativity/arts/theatre conference run by UCC's Drama and Theatre Studies department, and this year, as last year, I presented some work in progress at it.  Perforum welcomes interdisciplinary and experimental presentations, and since my work skips between poetry and drama, between academia and arts practice, I feel at home here.

Last year I showed a twenty-minute theatrical interpretation of my long poem 'Camino.'  As you can see here, the show had lighting and sound cues, costume, a memorised script and props.  At the time I wanted to explore making the performance of my long poetry more theatrical, and this really did seem to work: but it seemed also to take it away from being POETRY – which it is and always will be.  

The most fascinating part for me about making that piece was the idea of layering my own recorded voice over my live speaking voice, so this year I made a presentation experimenting with that.  I am now working on three simultaneous voices, each operating within a specific register, which I want to flow into, over and around each other, creating a semi-random ocean of meaning from which each listener will take their own poem.  In the presentation, I explained my hope that this word-palimpsest could undo or unravel the complexities of writing, as a woman, within language systems which are inherently patriarchal.  For me, it has felt liberating and playful to do this.

The piece I am working on now, for my PhD in Creative Writing, is a kind of playful rewriting of the history of Irish women and writing.  I'm exploring new ways to present knowledge outside of academic registers, in the hope that I can interrogate some of the barriers between academia and more widespread discourse.  Presenting in Durham University (see previous post) I outlined how poets may not see what I am doing as poetry; how historians will not see it as history; how academics will not see it as having academic validity.  These concerns just make the work more exciting, for me – though I have a sneaking suspicion that I would be better off making such wide leaps out of the status quo(s?) if I had a penis.

Having presented the work in progress, I now hope to work on the flow of the word-stream more (using Kate Hilder's techniques among others – see previous post).  I need to negotiate a fine line between overclarification (returning the piece to a linear word-sequence where meaning appears predetermined) and obscurity, where too little can be distinguished from the stream to make any meaning at all.  The work so far still feels like an introduction, and I am excited to follow the three interweaving voice-paths and to see where they will lead.

​Clips from the presentation to follow...

[standing eyes closed] [the space feels cool and empty]


[raise arms out: no walls]


It feels…cold.  And big, like forever.


[bend body, explore]


…and white.  White.  Mmmmmmmph


[arms stretch up, search for limits]


…a cool whiteness.  Like


[twist around, arms search]


a sphere, a ball, a white sphere.  Or…a cloud.  Maybe it’s a cloud.  When we were children and my father went away in a plane we thought he was going to land on a cloud, we thought 


[arms reach up, face reaches up to light]


all the places he said he was going were clouds, and the plane would land on a cloud and he would get out.  We thought


[warmer below.  Warm floor]


we were on a cloud too.  I had a picture in my mind of a blue sky, with all these clouds floating in it, and a little town on each cloud. 


[stretch out on floor (cloud)] [fingers stretch, wiggle, sing]


Loooolooloolooloo.


[they are flowers, cloud-flowers]


Leeeeeeeloolooloolooloo.


[draw arms in under, and knees]


But they weren’t all on clouds, because when I was on the swings at home and I went really high,


[roll over, arms out]


I could see a yellow house across the fields that was America.  And when we went to stay with our grandparents, we drove past an old barn that was Dublin, 


[draw in, a warm ball]


where my aunt lived and which was too far away to visit.  They must have been on the same cloud as us.


[standing up, looking up]


When we took my brother to watch the plane flying away into the clouds, he said ‘My Daddy will come back,’ then he started crying.  We were laughing, because we knew he would.


[the space feels very enclosed, like inside a cushion][or a cloud]


END

​The above excerpt from my experience in the workshop demonstrates my spontaneous discovery of a kind of “movement stream-of consciousness writing” which has enhanced my writing practice by literally adding the dimensions of time, space and movement into it.  From now on, I plan to workshop new texts by filming myself moving while I improvise them.  I have already done this several times.  The act of sitting at a desk is so limiting and physically constricting, and in my view to constrict the body is to constrict the mind…this feels like discovering the simplest, best way into more profoundly free creativity.

*Bodystories/Perforum were two linked performativity conferences run in UCC by the departments of Drama and Theatre Studies and Women's Studies from June 18-21 2016 (click on highlighted text for websites).

**Kate Hilder (http://katehilder.com) is a teacher and practitioner of movement, sound and word improvisation.  Her practice is informed by Action Theater™, “a form of physical theatre improvisation pioneered by Ruth Zaporah (USA),” and also by the Feldenkreis method.  Most of all, the practice seems to be about play and freedom. 

This March 8th I presented some of my doctoral work at Re-Sounding Voices, a conference run by the group of feminist philosophers behind Women in Parenthesis (womeninparenthesis.wordpress.com) - an investigation of the rise of women philosophers in English universities during World War Two.  

"Many people would struggle to name a female philosopher.  Few realise there was a golden age of female philosophy in this country..."

​This is a fantastic, important group of academics, and their website is an invaluable introduction to their work and to feminist philosophy.  They also made a fantastic audience for my first presentation of work in progress!

Just click the link below to see the Facebook event page for our show, Sagarmatha, in Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh at 7pm on Wednesday Feb 10th - tickets €5, proceeds to Nepal earthquake relief:  
​
https://www.facebook.com/events/1735288506701673/
​
...and watch this space for some preview clips!

Last year, sound artist and photographer Harry Moore and ​I each went to the Himalaya separately, and soon after we returned the catastrophic earthquake struck.  We've fused our diaries and added sound and image to create a dramatic narration that will hopefully bring that beautiful country and its people into the minds of those who see it.  We're performing it in the Sirius Arts Centre at 7pm on February 10th as part of their fantastic series of events, This Must Be The Place: check out everything else going on there at http://www.siriusartscentre.ie.  Tickets €5: proceeds go towards Nepal earthquake relief.