January 2023
| January 2023 NOTICE Some email browsers ‘clip’ the newsletter, making it shorter. If you click ‘View entire message‘ it will open the full newsletter News and updates on the programme of commemorations relating to the events in Irish history that took place between 1912 and 1923. If you would like to inform us of any suitable material for future newsletters – anything related to the Decade of Centenaries – please feel free to email [email protected]. 1. Lectures and Events (some require registration) Poetry as Commemoration Poetry as Commemoration Workshops (for adults) Newbridge Library 10 & 17 January 10.30 – 12.30 To register call 045 906130 FULL DETAILS HERE Markievicz Award The Markievicz Award was established to honour Constance de Markievicz – herself an artist – as the first woman to be elected to Parliament and appointed to Cabinet and is intended to:provide support for artists from all backgrounds and genres to buy time and space in order to develop new work that reflects on the role of women in the period covered by the decade of centenaries 2012–2023 and beyond.Markievicz Award recipients will receive €25,000, and awards will be made to up to ten applicants this year. Joint applications are welcomed. Applications OPEN on 17 January 2023 and CLOSE on 16 February 2023 FULL DETAILS HERE Kerry Civil War Conference Kerry Civil Way Conference History, Memory and Legacy Civil War in Kerry and Beyond: A Centenary Conference Siamsa Tíre Theatre, Tralee, County Kerry23/24/25 February 2023 DETAILS AND REGISTRATION HERE Building As Witness Project Award Winners Announcing BUILDING AS WITNESS Project Awards! Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to announce that, following careful consideration of all the submissions, its judging panel has chosen to fund six BUILDING AS WITNESS Project Awards. BUILDING AS WITNESS focuses on the site of Crawford Art Gallery (previously Crawford Municipal School of Art) which was witness to fascinating histories of local, national, and international importance surrounding the Irish Civil War period. The Gallery team is excited to work with the selected artists as they develop the following projects in 2023 and 2024. Ursula Burke An exploration of the indelible imprint that the Burning of Cork left on its people, buildings, and psychology through the creation of a tapestry frieze and corresponding sculpture. Linda Curtin & David Keating Using dramatic reconstruction, tableau vivant, and a cast of actors, visitors will be placed at the centre of a short theatre experience in virtual reality that positions Seán Keating’s painting Men of the South in its own time. Fiona Linnane The creation of a 30-minute musical work responding to the building, its architecture, and history, in collaboration with the youth ensembles of Cork ETB School of Music and documented through video and photography. Jan McCullough A new sculptural intervention and photo work that initiates a public dialogue about the building and its embodiment of caretaking, past and present, accompanied by a tailored public programme for visitors and participants. Brian Teeling & Jennie Taylor Served by in-depth archival research and psycho-geographical fieldwork, this project will produce an audio-tour and a publication of photographic work and short stories focused on one person during the period. Dominic Thorpe Irish Civil War violence within the vicinity of the building as a catalyst for two live durational performances and multi-media artworks addressing collective perpetrator trauma. BUILDING AS WITNESS is kindly supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries initiative. MORE DETAILS HERE 2. Exhibitions/Projects Poetry as Commemoration Cobh The Poetry Jukebox is a small standing structure, deliberately styled to represent a gramophone or speaking trumpet. The unit contains a series of recordings of short poems where upon pressing a button you can hear a poet read their own poem.Developed by Dr. Catherine Wilsdon under the national Decade of Centenaries programme 2012-2023, members of the public will be able to hear works by well-known poets including Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, John Hewitt and W.B. Yeats, as well as lesser-known writers such as D.L. Kelleher, Alice Milligan and Agnes Kerr. Available at Cobh Promenade from December 2022 until March 2023. MORE DETAILS HERE 3. Podcasts The Anti-Treaty strikes back In this podcast, author and historian Eoin Swithin Walsh recounts how anti-Treaty forces struck back in Kilkenny in late 1922.’December 1922 was a pivotal month in the Civil War. It looked like the Free State Army were fully in the driving seat. However, in the middle of December, the anti-Treaty IRA hit-back. It was in direct response to the executions of four anti-Treaty leaders in Dublin on 8 December. Free State HQ in Kilkenny, led by Commandant Prout, was hit by the capture of four barracks in the division; Carrick on Suir, Callan, Mullinavat and Thomastown; along with the capture of the Coon outpost barracks. The anti-Treaty forces were led by well-known names of the independence era; Tom Barry, Dinny Lacey, Bill Quirke and Ned Aylward. However, the captures were masterminded by Callan man, Ned Somers. He was in the Free State Army but defected to the anti-Treaty side. The three Kilkenny barracks, including all the weapons, were captured without a single shot being fired, which was a real embarrassment to the Free States authorities. Find out what happened during this dramatic month in this podcast.’ LISTEN HERE Marú in Íarthar Chorcaí (Murder in West Cork) Documentary shown on TG4, 9.30pm, Wednesday 7 December 2022 and History Ireland podcast discussing the documentary. Over two nights in April 1922, thirteen Protestant men were shot dead in West Cork. According to Peter Hart’s 1998 book The IRA and its enemies, they were shot because they were Protestants— sectarian killings carried out by members of the IRA—and ‘the nationalist revolution had also been a sectrian one’. Hart’s controversial conclusions sparked a ‘history war’ that has raged ever since. Prior to the programme being aired, History Ireland editor Tommy Graham discussed the documentary with Brian Hanley, Simon Kingston, Eve Morrison and Jerry O’Callaghan. Brian Hanley is Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin, and author of Republicanism, crime and paramilitary policing in Ireland, 1916–2020 (Cork University Press, 2022). Simon Kingston is co-founder of the West Cork History Festival. Eve Morrison is Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin, and author of Kilmichael: the life and afterlife of an ambush (Irish Academic Press, 2022). Jerry O’Callaghan is the producer (with Michael Heney) and presenter of Marú in Íarthar Chorcaí. TG4 DOCUMENTARYHISTORY IRELAND PODCAST CHANNEL W.B. Yeats and the Irish Free State A century ago, in December 1922, at the height of the Civil War, poet W.B. Yeats was nominated to the Senate of the newly established Irish Free State.In January of that year he had participated in the cultural programme of the Irish Race Congress in Paris.In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, a major boost to the prestige of a nation after the trauma of civil war.He was to serve for six years in the Senate.In the 1930s he briefly flirted with Eoin O’Duffy’s Blueshirts.How are we to assess Yeats’s relationship to the Irish Free State?To address this and other questions, join History Ireland editor Tommy Graham in discussion with Lucy Collins, Theo Dorgan, Darragh Gannon and Katherine McSharry. HISTORY IRELAND PODCAST CHANNEL Roscommon a century ago: community, continuity and change As part of the Decade of Centenaries 2022 Roscommon Library hosted three exciting new online talks. Each of the talks focused on different aspects of the history and heritage of County Roscommon in the 1900-30 period. LISTEN BACK HERE Donegal in the Civil War Donegal in the Civil War While not in the vanguard of the War of Independence, Donegal became the scene of the last standup fight between the IRA (pro- and anti-Treaty) and British military (in the ‘Pettigo triangle’), with the latter using heavy artillery for the first time in Ireland since 1916.On the outbreak of the Civil War some of these IRA men, originally mobilised for the now-aborted ‘Northern offensive’, were caught up in the hostilities that followed. Four of them were subsequently executed, the only four executions to take place in the county.To discuss these and related questions join History Ireland editor Tommy Graham in conversation with Adrian Grant, Breandán MacSuibhne and Pauric Travers. LISTEN HERE |