In the Lyric Feature on RTÉ lyric fm, poet Jessica Traynor sets out to write a poetic history of the town of Banagher in County Offaly - listen to A Place of Pointed Stones above.
Below, Jessica describes the background to the project...
The broadcasting of A Place of Pointed Stones on RTÉ lyric fm brings to a close a passion project of mine that began all the way back in 2019.
In the winter of that year, I was excited about what 2020 had in store for me. I was about to embark on an exciting new project. I had just snagged a fascinating Public Art commission from Offaly County Council, funded by the Per Cent for Art Scheme – I was to spend the next year researching and writing a poetic history of Banagher, the historic town at the heart of Ireland, on the banks of the river Shannon.
Alongside the researching and writing of poems reflecting the historic and contemporary life of the town, I was excited to spend time in Banagher; meeting the locals, offering creative writing workshops, and being involved in the annual That Beats Banagher festival. I was planning weekend (research) getaways in Charlotte's Way, the house where local man Arthur Bell retired after his wife, the novelist Charlotte Bronte, passed away. It was then functioning as a luxurious B&B. I had visions of evenings spent in J.J. Hough’s Singing Pub, chatting to the tourists about their boating holidays on the Shannon. I was excited to experience the Horse Fair, to learn more about Charlotte Bronte’s and Anthony Trollope’s connections to the town, and to explore the ancient gravestones in St. Rynagh’s graveyard, perched on a hill behind the main street, gazing down on the Shannon. But then, in March 2020, the world shut down. How could I continue the project without access to the information and inspiration Banagher had to offer?
I had already made preliminary visits to the town, where I had met the inimitable James Scully, local historian and passionate champion of all things Banagher. A forty minute chat with James on a cold night in December 2019 in Flynn’s Bar, before he had to whisk a group of visitors on a night-time tour of the town, turned out to be enough to turn up myriad avenues of research and enquiry. I left with a borrowed trove of books on the local area, with Valentine Trodd’s Midlanders: Chronicle of a Midlands Parish (Scéal, 1994), lent to me by the ever-generous Kieran Keenaghan, proving particularly invaluable. I made ample use of the National Folklore Collection’s online collection, which allowed me to read hundreds of folktales and local customs gathered in the Banagher area.
These accounts inspired poems on everything from local weather lore, to the (contested) origins of the 'That Beats Banagher!’ saying.
‘It began like so many nights –
a cold walk from the shebeen,
the bile of another loss
churning in my gut, and then,
the shock of the table
in the middle of the bridge.
There was a man sitting at it,
a stillness in him so deep
it dimmed the sound of water
rushing underneath.’
(from Banagher Beats the Devil)
I had also had time to do some preliminary workshops with transition year students at Banagher College, where I had prompted them to write poems about what Banagher meant to them. I was especially keen that the living town should be reflected through the eyes of its young people. I collaged a poem from their writing which reflects on the hallowed local G.A.A. ground, the ever-present Shannon, and local landmarks like the town’s historic churches, and Cuba Avenue – immortalised in Johnny McEvoy’s song The Town I l Left Behind. As part of the project, I had planned to work with composer Elaine Agnew to set the poem to music, to be sung by the students themselves. Somehow, in lockdown, over Zoom, through outdoor rehearsals, and with the support of St Rynagh’s National School, Offaly County Council’s Arts Office, and Music Generation Offaly/Westmeath, we made it happen.
You can listen to the resulting song, From the Shannon to St. Rynagh’s, here:
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In the summer of 2020, lockdown lifted long enough for me to go back to Banagher twice, where James Scully gave me an in-depth tour of the town. The second time, my two-year-old tow, we made a special pilgrimage to Clonony Castle, once home to members of the Boleyn family, and also to Sir Matthew de Renzi, a seventeenth century German settler who learnt Irish and wrote an Irish dictionary.
I also managed to speak to some former and current residents of the town – including Kieran Keenaghan, David Boylan and Nancy Kelly – about their memories of the town, all of which inspired more poems.
'On days like those she remembers
the bargeman who stood on deck
and sang Bolero, the melody spiralling
through the bridges' archways…’
(from Nancy Kelly’s Banagher)
In the autumn of 2020, against all odds, the pamphlet was taking shape, and I worked with Jamie Murphy of The Salvage Press to publish a limited edition of what had come to be called A Place of Pointed Stones - one interpretation of the meaning of the name Banagher. Of course, I later discovered that this interpretation is likely not the correct one – but there’s something about the poetic nature of the title, and the poetic licence taken in any project like this, that seems to tie it all to that specific and challenging time.
When lockdown lifted, I made another trip to Banagher in the company of producer Claire Cunningham and James Scully to make recordings for our Lyric Feature, and to try and capture the atmosphere of what turned out to be a golden summer's day when the town showed us its best and truest self.
We hope that when you listen to our feature on RTÉ lyric fm, you’ll hear some of the echoes we experienced that day: the ghost of Charlotte Bronte on her honeymoon in the town, snatches of a bargeman’s song under the bridge, and the hint of a halter bell on the wind on the site of the old Fair Green.
‘Through years of unpaved roads
and ambushed mail cars they canter,
the jingle of a sulky carried on the breeze,
hooves sparking on vanished cobbles.’
(from The Horse Fair)
The pamphlet of my poems, A Place of Pointed Stones, is published by Offaly County Council and funded through the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government Per Cent for Art Scheme. It is available to download from the Offaly County Council website here.
Listen to more from The Lyric Feature here.
