John Hewitt
This year marks the 18th John Hewitt International Summer School and our third in the Marketplace Theatre, Armagh.
Between Monday 25th July until Friday 29th July, the School will address the theme “Tarnished Map: the geography of memory after conflict”, a phrase Hewitt used in his 1984 “postscript” to his lyrical poem “Ulster Names” written in 1954. The 2005 John Hewitt International Summer School brings together writers and artists, poets and politicians, musicians and academics, with hundreds of ordinary people from the North and elsewhere... to share in art, literature, drama, music, creativity, discussion and debate. The Hewitt Society invites all with an interest in literature, the arts, civic society the past and/or the future to participate.
There are a wide variety of exciting speakers this year. Here are the contributors:
Fadhil Al-Azzawi was born in Kirkuk, Iraq and studied at Baghdad and Leipzig Universities. His publications include six novels, a short-story collection, numerous translations and works of literary criticism and six volumes of poetry including Miracle Maker: the Selected Poems of Fadhil Al-Azzawi (2003). He now lives in Berlin.
Maureen Boyle, from Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone is a teacher, bookseller and freelance writer. She won second prize in the Dun Laoghaire International Poetry Competition, her poems appear in The Yellow Nib (Blackstaff, 2005) a new literary journal and she reviews for Fortnight and BBC Radio Ulster.
CL Dallat, from Ballycastle, is a poet, musician and critic who reviews Irish fiction and drama for the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian as well as being a regular contributor to Radio 4's Saturday Review. His second poetry collection, Old Winter's Song is due in 2006.
Una Agnew is Head of the Spirituality Department at Milltown Institute, Dublin. In 1991 she completed a PhD on the Spiritual dimension of the work of Patrick Kavanagh and her book, 'The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh: A Buttonhole in Heaven', was published in 1998.
Eamon Delaney is the editor of Magill magazine, Ireland's foremost cultural and political monthly. He is also the author of a novel, The Casting of Mr O'Shaughnessy and An Accidental Diplomat, a memoir of his time in the Irish foreign service.
Armagh Theatre Group was formed in 1965 and has provided a wide variety of entertainment to the local population and further afield over the past forty years. One of the provinces leading amateur dramatic societies, The Group has captured this history in a highly entertaining miscellany of prose, poetry and song.
Willie Drennan is a traditional musician, storyteller, poet and writer, who draws much of his material from the Ulster Scots cultural traditions of his native County Antrim. He has produced seven CD recordings and is artistic coordinator of the Ulster Scots Folk Orchestra.
Terence Brown is Professor of Anglo-Irish literature the University of Dublin, Trinity College. He is a Fellow of the college, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Academia Europaea. He has published and lectured widely on Irish literary and cultural history
Angela Feeney, Soprano, was born in Belfast and was the first Irish Soprano ever engaged at the Munich State Opera. She has sung at major Opera houses in Europe. Currently, she is Artistic Director of the Belfast Bursaries and Allegro Belfast Agency
London-born Anne Cadwallader came to Ireland in 1981 and has worked in Belfast and Dublin for the BBC, RTE, Today FM, the Irish Press and Ireland on Sunday. She now works as Northern Correspondent for Independent Network News (Dublin). In 2004 she wrote "Holy Cross: The Untold Story" to critical acclaim. It sold out in six weeks and re-printed in 2005.
Anne-Marie Fyfe was born in Cushendall, Co. Antrim and now lives in London where she runs the Coffee-House Poetry reading series at Earls Court's famous Troubadour. A freelance teacher of literature and creative writing she won 1st prize in Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition (2004). Her third poetry collection,The Ghost Twin from Peterloo Poets (2005) will be launched at the John Hewitt International Summer School.
Shaun Griffin is a Virginia City poet, editor, and translator who operates an education programme for homeless children and youths. He has written 5 books of poetry and edited 2 poetry collections, 'Desert Wood' and 'Torn by Light'.
Austin Hunter is Editor-in Chief of the News Letter. His career began in local newspapers in Tyrone in 1970. He went on to work for the BBC as a radio and televison journalist in the 80s. In the 90s he switched to public relations, working for two years for GCAS Public Relations in Belfast and then heading up the BBC's Public Relations. In 2001 he became Director of Media and Public Relations for the RUC and then the PSNI and in 2004 he joined the News Letter.
Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone and after reading English Literature at Cambridge University, qualified as a solicitor. His essays, poems and reviews have appeared in many publications including the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the Guardian. His awards include an Eric Gregory in 2004 and the 2005 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
Pat Loughrey is the BBC's Director of Nations & Regions, responsible for all programmes produced outside London. This includes 15 television stations and over 40 radio stations. Prior to that he led BBC NI for 5 years. He comes from Donegal and has a passionate interest in History and local literature.
Dr Rory Miller is Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King's College, London. He is associate editor of the academic journal Israel Affairs, and a regular contributor to Magill Magazine. He is the author of two books, Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to a Jewish State in Palestine (2000) and Ireland and the Palestine Question 1948-2004 (2005).
Meabh McCaffrey is the Outreach Officer for the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission's Digital Film, which was launched in 2000 and contains 55 hours of moving images about Northern Ireland. Meabh delivers themed workshops using moving images from the archive to community groups, historical societies, schools and anyone else who is interested!
Nigel McLoughlin has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and co-edited the anthology Breaking The Skin. His third collection, Blood, is published by Bluechrome (2005).
Annie Mc Cartney is a writer, actor and broadcaster. She has been writing since 1994 when her first Radio play "Lemon Haired Ladies" won RTE's PJ O'Connor Award. She has written several afternoon and Saturday plays for Radio 4 and three series of "Two Doors Down" a comedy set in South Belfast. She has had several short stories broadcast on Radio 4 and has also published two books.
Pol O Muiri was born in Belfast in 1965. He is author of a dozen books, including works of poetry, fiction and novellas for adult learners of Irish. He has had four plays broadcast on RTE Radio 1. His latest collection of poetry is Na Mointeacha (Lagan Press) and he is currently writing a collection of short stories in Irish for teenagers.
HUGH ORDE joined the Metropolitan Police Service in 1977 and was appointed Commander (Crime) for South West London in June 1998. In October 1999 he was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner and given day to day responsibility for the Commissioner's Enquiry (Stevens III). Awarded the OBE in 2001, he was appointed Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in May 2002.
Eilish Rooney is a lecturer in the School of Sociology and Applied Social Studies, University of Ulster. She is a feminist community activist. She was awarded the Cornell Law Faculty Semester Visiting Scholarship in Gender, Sexuality and Family and is currently working in the areas of facing the past through 'story telling'.
Gillian Slovo was born in South Africa and is the author of 10 novels and co-author of a play about Guantanamo. A long-term ANC member, her novel, Red Dust, was born after she sat through the amnesty application of an ex-South-African policeman who had murdered her mother, Ruth First. Red Dust is now a feature film. Ice Road, her latest novel, was short listed for the Orange Prize.
Professor Kevin Whelan is Michael J. Smurfit Director of the Keough-University of Notre Dame Centre in Dublin. He has published fifteen books and almost one hundred articles, and has lectured on Irish topics in over a dozen countries.
source - http://www.johnhewitt.org/
Theatre's the place for top cop on historic day
Ian Hill, Man About Town
01 August 2005
There was praise for the PSNI Chief Constable in Armagh's Marketplace Theatre on Thursday. For hadn't Hugh Orde kept his promise to speak at one of the prime events in the province's literary calendar, the John Hewitt International Summer School. That was despite it being the day of the IRA's potentially historic announcement.Of course, being Ulster, there was one curmudgeonly remark from one non-delegate in the Theatre about hadn't the man better things to do than to talk about books.
Indeed this year's School, held to celebrate as ever the memory of the late Glensman and poet John Hewitt, was packed with prescient
Take Fadil Al-Azzawi. Twenty-eight years ago, when Saddam was but vice-president, this magical realist poet had had to slip out of his native Iraq to escape a regime whose code for writers was that 'if you're not for us you're against us'. Even now Fadil, whose poems may be read in translation in the journal Banipal, would never go back.
Gillian Slovo, the crime writer whose latest novel Red Dust, set in post-apartheid South Africa, stars Nicole Kidman, had, naturally, much to say about dealing with the painful heritage of conflict. Her mother, the anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, was murdered by a letter bomb mailed by the police.
Over lunchtime soup the poet and critic C L Dallat, son of the School's long time head Dr Cathal Dallat, recalled how he and his wife and fellow poet Anne-Marie Fyffe had felt they had to leave the Glens for London during the Ulster Workers' Strike. Maybe, they mused, it might be time to return.
Teacher Anne Hart and Armagh Mummer Dara, one of the many Vallelys about, talked of the upcoming The Painter and The Mask exhibition which will tour Ireland and America.
Committee member Carmel Maguire ,of the North West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust, Academic Adviser Dr Myrtle Hill ,of Queen's, and the Workers' Party's Tom French were delighted with the turnout. They reunited me with another School regular, lanky engaging moustachioed Virginia City poet Shaun Griffin who divides his time between poetry and education programmes for homeless children. Shaun's wife, Reno academic Deborah Loesch-Griffin, had just flown in from Nevada.
School Director Tony Kennedy talked with opera diva Angela Feeney and her husband Nico Grüber about the programme for Laganside Ensemble's Musical Soirée. Featuring Belfast Classical Music Bursary stars Aishling Agnew on flute and David McCallum on cello, it was to be a European musical journey beginning with Bizet's Carmen and finishing neatly with The Spanish Lady.
Many hung on to every word from the articulate Slovo. For she addressed the operations and implications of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which lies at the core of her book Red Dust. After attending months of its sessions where those responsible for deliberate and brutal assassinations sought absolution for their crimes, Gillian had come to a grim conclusion. She didn't believe a single one of them.
Ian Hill
source - http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=654959
