Doireann Ní Ghríofa on bringing A Ghost In The Throat to the stage in Cork

The author will read excerpts of her acclaimed book as part of a streamed show from the Everyman for Cork Midsummer Festival

Sun, 13 Jun, 2021 - 18:08

Marjorie Brennan

There are some writers who possess the enviable talent of not only working their magic on the page, but also on the stage — breathing new life into their work through public readings.

Anyone who has ever heard Doireann Ní Ghríofa reading her poetry will know how she thrives on the oral rendition, bringing a whole new dimension and power to her writing. To have been deprived of such an outlet in the last year or so, when she launched her acclaimed prose debut, A Ghost in the Throat, has been a blow.

“In an ordinary year, I would have been flitting like a butterfly from one literary festival to the next, being given a chance to stand up on a stage and read a chunk of the book," she says. "I think as adults, we respond so strongly to that — to having the chance to just sit back and have an author read a section of a book to you. It is such a treat, I love it myself. That very normal, taken for granted part of having a book published was taken away with Covid.”

However, thanks to Cork Midsummer Festival, Ní Ghríofa will now get her chance to read from A Ghost in the Throat live on stage, accompanied by visuals from filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan and a soundscape by composer Linda Buckley.

Ní Ghríofa says the festival and its director Lorraine Maye have played a big role in supporting her career as a writer and, fittingly, enabled her to complete A Ghost in the Throat.

“Lorraine has a fantastic vision, she has really nurtured me as a writer along the way in quiet ways that people wouldn’t necessarily see. When A Ghost in the Throat was published, I thanked Lorraine in the acknowledgments because there came a point when I was struggling to write it.

"She proposed taking me on board in the new role of artist-in-residence that was being created that year. I can’t tell you how much of a lift that gave me, the encouragement of that, the sense of being seen. It became a two-year residency — I wrote so much of A Ghost in the Throat during that time. So much of this feels like a homecoming.”

Ní Ghríofa’s reading will be streamed online, so the audience will be virtually rather than physically present. However, it does enable her to reach those who might not otherwise get to see the event, something that is very important to her.

“I feel very excited being given an opportunity to read from my book with these beautiful visuals and soundscape, and that it won’t just be for people who would be able to come to Cork that night but will be open to everyone. I love that, when you have the sense of throwing the doors open to something.

"With this reading, I feel like we are throwing the doors open to the book, that it will welcome lots of people into it in an oblique way. There are so many lessons we can carry with us from the pandemic and I really think that is one of them, opening up live events and theatre gigs. As we move back to live events, I hope that will continue in tandem with the live experience.”

Ní Ghríofa says the addition of visuals and sound by O’Sullivan and Buckley will give audiences a whole new perspective on the book.

“They have transformed it into something that exists in the viewer’s imagination but also in their ear and in their eye. I am really thrilled as a writer to see it coming to life, it is something extraordinary for me.”

A Ghost in the Throat is a haunting and truly original blend of essay, auto-fiction and poetry in which Ní Ghríofa’s explores the ways in which her own life chimes with that of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, author of the famous 18th-century lament Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire. The visual motifs in the book have inspired O’Sullivan, who filmed at several locations featured in the book.

“For anyone watching this, they will get glimpses of Derrynane, the city and the elements from the book that would have come to life in their own mind’s eye when they were reading, but now they will see it through his eyes as well. It makes something strange and special of it, that I feel will be open both to people who have read it and those who have not because it gives a great flavour of it beyond the page.

"Linda came to the two entities, these glimpses and the reading, and she composed this haunting soundscape. It is absolutely fascinating how a book can take flight into another artist’s imagination and what comes of it,” says Ní Ghríofa.

A Ghost in the Throat is inspired by a woman’s voice, that of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, and according to Ní Ghríofa, she wrote it in oral fashion too, reading each passage aloud many times as she wrote. In this way, she says, the live reading returns the text to the voice that first created it.

“There is an element of this that is primal. The oral tradition is really strong in this book. I wasn’t just writing about the oral tradition, I was bringing in some of those elements of the oral tradition into the writing of the book itself. Doing a reading from the book where I speak the text out loud to the audience, that feels like completing the circle in some way, or maybe it feels like releasing another echo from the book, the sense of having it returned to the spoken voice again.”

While Ní Ghríofa’s reading will be streamed to audiences far beyond the Everyman, she will still be standing on stage in an empty theatre, which she says adds to the circularity of the whole experience.

“I really feel with the pandemic I have lost that sense of what it is like to walk into a new place. We have become so used to being in our homes and the same places. I was in the Everyman and it was kind of strange, which is in keeping with this book. It is a haunted book, why wouldn’t I be giving its only reading on a haunted stage?”

However, ultimately, the act of reading will give Ní Ghríofa the live experience and the connection with her readers that sustains her.

“It feels quite intimate in some ways, listening to an author reading their own book, whether it is an audiobook or a live reading, you get carried away, don’t you? Think of someone like Kevin Barry, you are totally enraptured… I am like a child again listening to him.

"That is what we are striving for as writers and that is what literary festivals have always given us, that opportunity to stand and tell the story of the book to an audience. That is something that is very rare at the moment.”