Armagh Project 2015

Friday: the last day of Hewitt-Con. The first panel of the day may have been the best; Alistair Moffat talked about the history of the DNA of the Irish people– all people actually. He spoke of the migrations of people over the millennia, climate changes, and substantial markers in DNA variants. I learned that porridge helped small tribes actually start to grow larger as women no longer needed to wean their children for extended periods of time and could resume bearing children when porridge is easy to eat and provides many proteins they’d get from breast milk. We had to do some recordings of our work for a promotional video, so that cut into other presentations, but I saw the fiction one. We also had a session where students from each workshop read their work to the audience, Carolyn was the only one who read from the Armagh Project. Malachi’s debate was the culminating event of the festival, he spoke with a Presbyterian minister, a Sinn Fein politician who used to be in the IRA, and a protestant woman who is married to the PUP chairman and runs an Irish language school.

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Thursday primarily reminded me that we are nearing the end of the trip. Tess Gallagher’s reading struck me the most today, her poetry combined urbana and nature well. Mary Costello provided some insight into adapting memoir/life events into fiction stories, without totally making the main character a copy of yourself. The scriptwriting workshop was actually pretty good, we didn’t do anything creative, but we reviewed the whole concept of a story, which is always useful. The instructor made me feel better about my process; I feel like I’ve always been taught that character drives the plot and to start with the character. I often find myself as a big-picture person, looking at the plot first (which is probably best for videogame writing, since the player is the main character and will be playing as she wants to). The instructor stated that starting with plot is fine– creating a world and the story and then figuring out “what kind of character would go through this” and expand from there. So, I say the workshop was beneficial.

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A Night

And he pushes me out the door

And the night weeps on his shoulders

And the pavement pools slap at his knees

And passing headlights snap a glimpse of him

And he hears a tree branch snap, somewhere

And he finally approaches the white screened door

And the hinges squeal like excited pups

And mud spots litter the kitchen’s tiles

And he smells soggy, as wet clothing does

And his stained boots tumble down, unzipped

And more household squeaks follow him upstairs

And he tosses away his jacket and jeans

And the bed calls him down to the floorboards

And he gently sinks to his sore knees

And he crawls carefully under the blankets

And the rain taps away at the one window

And I, at last, take the reins for now…

Day two:

Our workshop is going well. I am getting a lot of tips on crime fiction that can be converted into crime reporting. For instance, writing in shorter and punchier sentences is good advice for both reporting and writing crime.

The showcase was an amazing way to show off all of the work we have done this month. The performances all went really well, and we all got complimented after by audience members who genuinely seemed interested in what we had done.

Day three:

The controversy at Ian Knox was interesting. From seeing it first-hand and from talking to others in the group, I have gotten the sense that Ireland struggles with racism and racial ignorance because it is not a very diverse population.

Malachi’s talk was fascinating. He has a very cynical point of view on Northern Ireland politics, but all of his insights are completely valid. I learned so much about N.I’s situation with the union as well as the European union and the politics in Europe in general.

Day four:

In our crime fiction workshop, our teacher had us all write from the same scenario. We all wrote with a character that was about to get married and a character who was a spy running from pursuers, and both characters were traveling to Armagh. I think it was a good scenario to write from because it was a good contrast and gave the chance to write something happy and something a little sinister.

Hewitt:

The John Hewitt summer school has been a really valuable experience. The showcase was a perfect way to present our plays, poems and stories.

We all got the chance to meet people from Northern and Southern Ireland as well as Britain and other parts of Europe. John Hewitt brings people together from a wide variety of places.

The sessions themselves were very informative. There were all types of writers and academics, including playwrights, journalists, poets, politicians and activists. My favorite session was Malachi’s panel because Malachi’s moderation was critical and straight to the point. The panel discussed education, Catholics and Protestants, welfare, the Irish language and much more.

The summer school was a great way to end the Armagh Project.

Wednesday was rather full, I attended all but one presentation, since Malachi spoke to us about the future of Northern Ireland during the afternoon. I greatly enjoyed the poetry of Iggy McGovern, which contained great puns and lots of correlations to the sciences. The poems about his youth were my favorites. Ian Knox presented on his cartooning, all of which were very informative. There was a tense moment during a comic that showed a man arguing for slavery and another 100 years later arguing for the hunting of hares. Knox did not mean to equate the lives of black people to those of hares, but he meant to show that the same type of arguments, that have been shot down before, are being utilized again and again to justify wrong acts. The Irish people in the audience showed their collective concern and embarrassment, as many came up to us an apologized after the presentation. Malachi brought up the interesting notion that one day Britain might just leave the union, and Northern Ireland wouldn’t really be missed by current administration if it left, unlike Scotland. That night, we saw Two Sore Legs directed by Martin Lynch was an exceptional one-woman play about a woman growing up and dealing with love and out-of-wedlock children, her range of characters was very strong. The show goes onto Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival next month. We ended the night with a poetry reading performed by a gang of Belfast students accompanied by Paul Maldrun.

Tuesday presented some interesting sessions, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown spoke on the struggles of Muslim women in the world and the growing freedoms/rejections of “tradition” such as covering the face, which, aparently, doesn’t have a place in the Quran. The scriptwriting workshop moved from character creation to monologues. It was only during the presentations of the others that I thought of what my character would be. Our showcase went very well. We had some great feedback from the audience members afterward. I might need to change the towns named in my play or clean it up a bit. Knocksedan was an Alliance town, not IRA, which explains why in Shadow of a Gunman, the IRA are going to do bombing there.

As an actor in the presentation of the plays we made, I had to say that it’s tough to keep a straight face throughout the whole thing because the works were so funny. I failed at that, yes, but when it came my time to be the Priest, I became natural. I buttoned the collar on the black shirt to be reminiscent of the clothes they wear. I did more than just read lines, I morphed my face and tone to it. I can’t say I became a prayer-spitting missionary of the One True Jealous God, but it came easily. To be honest, I didn’t feel any stage fright, as the darkness cast over the audience was so strong I couldn’t see them. It felt just like any other rehearsal.