Writers’ Week in Listowel: The value of ‘little places’
THIS week, Listowel will host its 44th Writers’ Week, that home-grown festival of literature and arts, conviviality, and culture, and of course all things North Kerry. No doubt the craic will be mighty, the porter and conversation will be flowing, the workshop participants will be earnestly revising, and the place will be humming. The arts and literature, no less than the Sam Maguire Cup, offer a great excuse for a party.
It seems to me, here on my side of the Atlantic, to represent a wonderfully joyous celebration of the genius loci, the distinctive spirit of place, which enlivens this special little town on the River Feale.
But it was not always such. I think of the oft-quoted lines of that gifted poet and Kerryman, Brendan Kennelly:
If life in little places dies, Greater places share the loss.
He published these words in 1963 in his short novel, The Crooked Cross, which centred on the decline and decay of a North Kerry village.
It was not an auspicious time in Kerry, or Ireland for that matter, and the village that Kennelly depicted was hardly the stuff of the tourist board brochures — no matter the hoopla that surrounded JFK’s homecoming that year.
The First Programme for Economic Expansion had yet to really kick in, the county’s dairy farmers sold to the ludicrously named Dairy Disposal Board rather than the Kerry Group, and time was just ticking over. The life, and the light, of many small communities was going out.
Surely the past 50 years have seen many changes both for better and worse, including the excesses of the Celtic Tiger of blessed memory. But no matter whether the economy is in boom or bust, “little places” are still so important, and still in jeopardy.
In many ways, Ireland remains something of a 21st century experiment, a laboratory in which to test whether a small open economy on the periphery of Europe can prosper in a competitive global economy without abandoning its values, its identity, and its distinctiveness — and its little places.
To mix a metaphor, Ireland’s “little places”, just like the village of the “crooked cross” that Kennelly wrote about, are the canaries in the mine. If they go, so much else that is worth protecting will be lost too.
And the best way to protect and nurture these places is through self-help and confidence in the real value of indigenous resources and capabilities. It is inspiring to see local people sustaining and capitalising on their own unique resources — their cultural assets, their social capital, their hospitality, food, landscape, and whatever it is that makes them distinctive.
North Kerry has its own distinctive terroir, its own dense fabric of social capital, its own rich literary history and cultural memory. Listowel Writers’ Week is a wonderful example of a world-class event that is grounded in the local and keeps faith with its heritage and traditions, created by people who were deeply embedded in their home place.
When the festival began in 1971, it was the brainchild of wonderful writers of place like John B Keane and Bryan MacMahon, among others, who unabashedly promoted the distinctiveness of Listowel and environs and its lively artistic, literary, and cultural scene.
Even today, Writers’ Week pulls in the very best of Irish literary talent and draws a worldwide audience, but still maintains that great awareness of and affection for the value of its own place. It has survived and prospered because it has remained as it began — uniquely, unabashedly, and authentically itself.
In the 21st-century economy, people are not going to travel halfway around the world for an imitative experience; they can find ersatz, derivative festivals anywhere. Instead they want a robust experience of authenticity and distinctiveness — and they know it when they see it and feel it.
If life in little places is to survive, and they are to remain places where, as JM Synge wrote, “the springtime of the local life has not been forgotten”, then the cultural resources that are the lifeblood of Writers’ Week must be constantly renewed and replenished. But the drastic cuts to arts budgets in Ireland provide little grounds for optimism.
If a fraction of the “incentives” that are given to the multinational corporations on which the country has bet its economic future were invested instead in making “little places” more vibrant, distinctive, and sustainable, it would yield benefits many fold. The benefits may only come in the longer term, and may tend to be hidden, but they will be there. And they will not just be social and cultural but economic as well.
Although I’ll miss Writers’ Week this year, I’ll be there in spirit. I’ve no doubt that the magic will be conjured up again, and that many will experience the satisfaction of spending some quality time in a living and lively little place called Listowel.
