Literary Cork
Modern Irish literature may belong to Dublin, but contemporary Irish literature belongs to Cork
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Literary Cork
by James O’Sullivan
Stranger’s Guide: Ireland
It is 1892, and Douglas Hyde—the man who will later become Ireland’s first president—is speaking at the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin. He is calling for a sustained program of cultural de-anglicization, calling for Irish culture to be privileged so that it might be reimposed. Cultural nationalism is all the rage, as Hyde shows by book-ending his speech with the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League, respectively tasked with promoting indigenous sports and the Irish language.
But beyond these hotel rooms, another group is already at work, busying themselves with the task of cultural rejuvenation. They are the writers, poets, novelists and playwrights, and such is their success that the final years of the nineteenth century will mark the beginning of one of Ireland’s most significant cultural moments: the Irish Literary Revival.
The origins of Irish literature can be traced to pre-Christian mythology, including tales such as The Táin, The Children of Lir and the Salmon of Knowledge. They are stories teeming with warriors and druids, the supernatural and witchcraft. They can still be seen reenacted most weekends as revelers spill onto the streets in the early hours, in their war paint, ready for blood. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century, the history of Ireland is one of subjugation and resurgence, culminating in the ascendency of British rule by the seventeenth century. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Ireland’s most notable literary figures were—with the exception of a few holdouts who persisted in the Irish language—Anglo-Irish, members of a well-educated, largely Protestant upper class writing almost exclusively in English. While there were some Anglo-Irish nationalists, most were imperialists, identifying as “British” rather than “English.” It was all very grim for a while, with much of the population isolated from much of the literary canon.
Then, in 1818, a young Dublin poet named James Mangan saw his first works published. As James Clarence Mangan, he would go on to be recognized as one of the first authors to further the nationalist agenda through literary means, laying the foundation for the Revival that would come some 50 years after his passing. The great value of the Revival is that its chief architects did not simply ensure continuity of Mangan’s legacy; authors like Yeats and Joyce contributed to a modern Irish literature that sought to both uphold and subvert nationhood, marking the early twentieth century as a golden age of Irish literature. Central to this golden age was the city of Dublin.
Present-day Dublin is a place of tension, a city with a rich cultural heritage belied by its unsustainable cost of living and gaudy tourist traps like Temple Bar. Situated in the middle of O’Connell Street, the General Post Office has long been a symbol of modern Irish history, most notably for its role in the 1916 Rising. Yet the chief thoroughfare in the capital city has been allowed to decay; its environs have been overrun by fast food chains and glaring arcades. It is pleasing to see how O’Connell Street has resisted the gentrification seen across other main streets in Europe—the Champs-Élysées is an entirely different sort of ugly—but the general mood of Ireland’s most-visited stretch of concrete is entirely representative of a city where the best bits are far too hidden.
Dublin’s literary tradition is a major part of this hidden culture. Dublin is the city that gave rise not only to the aforementioned W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, but also to other modern greats like Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and Elizabeth Bowen. Literary modernism, as it existed at its height, belonged to Dublin.
Those who are concerned with the task of demarcating cultural epochs like nothing more than a clear distinction between the modern and contemporary—now as we know it, and now as it just existed in our immediate past. Contemporary Irish literature has several peculiarities in relation to its antecedents, one of which is the decline of Dublin as the nexus for literature on the island. Beyond the Pale—as is said by those outside the capital—there now exist a great many literary communities, both urban and rural.
Irish parochialism is a damaging social force, but it is also useful in that one can quite readily identify distinctive scenes. To the west there is the Galway crowd, for which the Emily Cullen-directed Cúirt International Festival of Literature stands as the centerpiece. Meanwhile, Limerick’s literary community revolves around the Limerick Writers’ Centre, which has flourished under Dominic Taylor. Kerry is home to vibrant writers’ groups in Killorglin and Tralee—Noel King country—while Wicklow, circling back east, belongs to Bray Arts.
Some authors successfully cross between disparate scenes, but doing so leaves them vulnerable to appropriation. Ireland operates as something of a federation of local communities, and if one engages with a particular literary parish, they may see that acknowledged for the remainder of their career. Every parish claims those who have passed through, because every parish wants to be what the other parishes are not.
This is particularly so in Cork, to which its writers belong. Whether you come or go, you have no say in your personal identity—once Cork says you belong, then you belong, whether or not you wish it. This is because the literary traditions of Cork are rooted in the city’s characters, real figures to which there is now attached a sort of mysticism. They write characters, but they are themselves characters, as valuable to Cork storytelling as the stories themselves. Their works are lauded in all the most well-to-do venues, and the scholars—the canonmakers—are turning to them with increasing fervor. But you don’t really know Doireann Ní Ghríofa if you don’t know and wonder why she does her writing in a carpark, or that one cannot be considered a credible artist in Cork until photographed alongside Cónal Creedon—whose annual appearance alongside John Spillane at the Everyman Theatre marks the beginning of Christmas in Cork—in the window of Cork Coffee Roasters. These are our characters, more intriguing than any fiction.
Cork has chosen its characters well. Thomas McCarthy, a Cork poet who was instrumental in the region’s late twentieth century literary revival, was born in County Waterford. But McCarthy—whatever he may say—is a Cork poet. He is ours, chosen by Cork and given no say in the matter. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, another of Ireland’s most celebrated contemporary poets, has spent the best part of her life in Dublin. She has spent her entire career at Trinity College and has published in Ireland almost exclusively with the Dublin-based Gallery Press. Still, she was born and raised in Cork. She is ours.
Danny Denton’s stunning debut novel, The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow, is set in Dublin, but it’s a Cork novel. The word “Dublin” is there for all to see, but the condition is Cork. Writing on the novel elsewhere, I could only go as far as referring to it as being set “in Ireland,” because while it’s staged in Dublin, it’s dripping in Cork. The rain it so masterfully emphasizes is Cork rain. Danny is a great writer and character, and so, we will claim all that he does.
Cork’s attitude toward its writers reflects a deeper characteristic: a palpable exceptionalism that betrays a genuine sense of disassociation from the rest of Ireland that exists in the imagination of Corkonians, a notion satirically known as the People’s Republic of Cork. People from Cork see an otherwise socio-politically complicated map of Ireland in very simple terms: Cork / Not Cork.
It is unsurprising that such a context has given rise to a thriving literary scene in Cork—modern Irish literature may belong to Dublin, but the contemporary situation is entirely different. Contemporary Irish literature belongs to Cork.
As Ireland’s second-largest city, Cork has always had a strong literary community. But the wealth of writing to be encountered in Leeside is a consequence of strategic and sustained investment in the practices that make literature happen by a selection of local organizations across the city and county. Among these is University College Cork, through whose gates many of Munster’s most-fabled storytellers have passed. UCC is present throughout the lineage of Cork literature; Seán Ó Faoláin, Theo Dorgan, Maurice Riordan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Billy Ramsell are just a few of the institution’s graduates, while the current staff includes—among many others—Leanne O’Sullivan, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Mary Noonan, Graham Allen, John Fitzgerald, Cal Doyle, Mary Morrissy, Martín Veiga, Eimear Ryan, John Mee and Eibhear Walshe, who oversees UCC’s highly respected MA program in Creative Writing. There is enough talent just within UCC to sustain a generation of artistic practice. But universities, in their ability to hold and distribute cultural capital, enjoy considerable influence over who “makes it,” and thus tend to accumulate such cohorts through either recruitment or elevation.
Beyond UCC’s lesser-known southwestern gates, up and over Fort Street and down Barracka, is Douglas Street, where one finds Frank O’Connor House, home of the Munster Literature Centre, founded in 1993. A traveler entering this house and making their way to the top floor—some three or four narrow flights high—will come upon a small attic space crammed with books and space heaters. There are two workspaces in this room, one of which is usually occupied by Patrick Cotter. An award-winning poet, Cotter is director of the Munster Literature Centre, which has flourished throughout his tenure, becoming an exemplar of how a not-for-profit artistic organization should function. Currently, the MLC organizes the Cork International Poetry Festival and Cork International Short Story Festival—possibly two of the biggest such festivals in Europe—as well as innumerable workshops, readings and competitions. There are many unsung heroes behind the pages of any successful book, and Cotter has long been an unsung hero within Cork literary circles.
There is much more, most notably Ó Bhéal, a weekly Monday night meeting organized by Paul Casey. Ó Bhéal is mad. Hosted in the Long Valley Bar, it is the fight club of Cork literature. There are some rules, as evident in the Five Words Competition, and open-mic readers are requested to refrain from epics. Poetry marathons that break midnight on a school night are not for everyone, but for anyone wishing to see a literary community, unified and raucous and productive, this is it.
That’s what literary communities should be: unified. They should be more than pyramid schemes designed to help some and not others. They should be about education, about collegiality and reciprocity. It excites me to see Cork’s literary stars—Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Lisa McInerney, Danny Denton—gaining increasing recognition, nationally and beyond. As a Corkonian, their stories are my stories, and I take pride in their telling as you would the hurlers winning an All-Ireland. There is reciprocity, the fact that their words can be used as anchors when you begin to drift.
When I was a 15-year-old secondary school student wasting most of my time with assholes, my English teacher, Michael Sexton, took my class to a reading at the Granary Theatre to mark Cork’s stint as the European Capital of Culture. Prior to this event, English was just a subject for me, a thing I liked in school because it was easier than science. Then, I heard Cónal Creedon read “The Cure.” I heard him describe my city in smells. I could smell the crusty bread, the molten sugar, the oak casks, the sherbet, the malt and fish. I was compelled to feel, experiencing more than could be accomplished with any nodge. I came away from the Granary with a sense of what I wanted to do with my life, with a sense that I wanted to belong to a community like this, to save myself from something. I didn’t even know what it was I wanted to save myself from, or if it really would have been all that bad, but I wanted to save myself, nonetheless. So I did.
When literary communities become about authors instead of people, they have failed. Cork’s literary community is still—for the most part—about its people; its characters.
JAMES O’SULLIVAN lectures at University College Cork. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Irish Times, the SHOp, Cyphers and Southword.