30/30 Vision

The above was taken in the little village of Chapelizod, only a ten/fifteen minute drive from the centre of Dublin, but another world entirely. I had been asked a month ago to give a reading with another poet, Pat Boran, for the Chapelizod Community Festival in the little village of that name along the north side of the Liffey. The venue listed was the Park Lane gate of Phoenix Park (apparently the largest city park in Europe). My wife very kindly offered to drive me (which would have given me the opportunity to have a couple of scoops), but I was tired and figured I'd probably head home soon afterwards. Our boy has just broken out in Chickenpox so we're all a bit under the weather from his inability to sleep peacefully.

Lovely evening, if a bit on the cool side for June. Because of roadwork chaos, I drove through the village twice before locating the tiny right-hand turn, thence through a clutter of parked cars to the local newsagents I'd been told of, which was near the venue.

I found the Park Lane Gate, and looked for a pub nearby (perhaps with a similar name) or other likely building. But that was it (apart from some private houses): a modest, oldfashioned, pedestrian, turnstile-gate. I stepped through. Big chestnut trees, a sloping grassy bank, a tarmac lane dividing in three directions, left or right along the old wall or straight up the steep bank, into the body of the park.

Was this the place where we were going to read? The setting was pleasant enough; mature trees one one side, mature, higgledy-piggledy village on the other. I phoned Ian (the organiser's) mobile and confirmed it: this was the venue. I had had no idea that it was to be outdoors.

As it turned out, it was a pleasant reading, and quite unique. Only a handful of people turned up, but probably not much more would have come to an indoors venue. One of them, a middleaged lady with a shopping-laden bicycle whom I had met coming through the gate, had a punnet of strawberries and passed them round. Ian spread a rug on the ground. A dead branch sufficed for a bench for the readers.

The weather, which had been stealthily clouding over, held. By the time my co-reader Pat Boran turned up, it had cooled and darkened somewhat and a circling helicopter was droning over the village; more irritatingly, a circling fly had selected my ear as a choice LZ. But I enjoyed reading, and hearing him read.

Afterwards we went for a chat and coffee/non-alco beer in a lovely village pub, decidedly rural and informal. The above blip was taken outside, of the premises next door, which was being renovated I think. But quite a surprising number of the buildings are derelict, abandoned-looking. Apparently, many are owned by one person or family (some complication with inheritance).

As I drove home along the Liffey I was tempted to stop and shoot a couple of city skylines, dramatised by the louring shelves of dark grey stormclouds. But I had ordered a takeaway (Massaman lamb curry) for collection in Blackrock. And I wanted to see how the boy and my wife were faring.

Here's a photo I took of PAT BORAN reading to our modest but attentive (and I think appreciative) audience. One of the women told me that one of my poems (The Kiss) reminded her of Hopkins. First time anyone has compared me to Gerard Manley.