ICC Hammersmith Irish Cultural Centre

MUSICAL VOICES AND STORIES

Featuring a Novel, a Memoir and a Biography

This 3-part series of interviews in which the worlds of music and literature intersect has been specially produced for ICC Digital. The highly successful singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke will discuss his recent novel The Pawnbroker’s Reward which is set during the Famine; the renowned fiddler Martin Hayes will discuss his memoir, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey;  Richard Balls will discuss his biography of Shane McGowan, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane McGowan.

Richard Balls, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane McGowan (Omnibus Press, 2021)

The complete and extraordinary story of Shane McGowan, the Pogues’ notorious frontman, legendary drinker and Irish musical icon has never been told until now.  A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan vividly recounts the experiences that shaped one of the greatest songwriters of his generation: the formative trips to his mother's homestead in Tipperary, the explosion of punk which changed his life and the drink and drugs that nearly ended it.

As well as exclusive interviews with Shane himself, author Richard Balls has secured contributions from his wife and family, and people who have never spoken publicly about Shane before: close associates, former girlfriends and the English teacher who first spotted his literary gift. Nick Cave, Aidan Gillen, Cillian Murphy, Christy Moore, Sinead O’Connor and Dermot O’Leary are on the roll call of those paying tribute to the gifted songwriter and poet. This frank and extensive biography also includes many previously unseen personal photographs.
 
Richard Balls was a newspaper journalist for twenty years, almost half of which he spent in Ireland. He is an established writer and rock biographer, whose previous books are Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll: The Life of Ian Dury (2011) and Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story, (2014).

Interviewer: Anne Flaherty
A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and  The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from  Africa and Asia.  She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.

MUSICAL VOICES AND STORIES
Featuring a Novel, a Memoir and a Biography
This 3-part series of interviews in which the worlds of music and literature intersect has been specially produced for ICC Digital. The highly successful singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke will discuss his recent novel The Pawnbroker’s Reward which is set during the Famine;  the renowned fiddler Martin Hayes will discuss his memoir, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey;  Richard Balls will discuss his  biography of Shane McGowan, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane McGowan.
Martin Hayes, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey (Transworld, Ireland, 2021)
Martin Hayes is a renowned fiddler from County Clare. He won his first of six All-Ireland Fiddle Championships at the age of 13. He has toured and recorded with guitarist Dennis Cahill for over twenty years, he is a founding member of the Irish-American band The Gloaming, and a member of The Martin Hayes Quartet and The Common Ground Ensemble. He has played with many of the greatest traditional Irish musicians of the past thirty years, as well as Sting, Paul Simon and Yo-Yo Ma. He has won TG4 Gradam Ceoil Musician of the Year and BBC Instrumentalist of the Year. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant talents in Irish traditional music. In his memoir Shared Notes Hayes traces the remarkable journey from his childhood on a farm in County Clare in a household steeped in musical tradition, to dropping out of college, working as an illegal immigrant in the States and ultimately to building a hugely successful musical career.
Interviewer: Anne Flaherty
A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and  The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from  Africa and Asia.  She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.

MUSICAL VOICES AND STORIES
Featuring a Novel, a Memoir and a Biography
This 3-part series of interviews in which the worlds of music and literature intersect has been specially produced for ICC Digital. The highly successful singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke will discuss his recent novel The Pawnbroker’s Reward which is set during the Famine;  the renowned fiddler Martin Hayes will discuss his memoir, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey;  Richard Balls will discuss his  biography of Shane McGowan, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane McGowan.
 Declan O’Rourke, The Pawnbroker’s Reward (Gill Books, 2021)
Declan O’Rourke is one of Ireland’ most popular and successful singer-songwriters.  His award-winning album, Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine, was released to critical acclaim in 2017. It illuminated an extraordinary series of eye-witness accounts, including the story of Pádraig and Cáit ua Buachalla.
Four years on, in Declan’s meticulously researched literary debut, the story of the ua Buachalla family is woven into a powerful, multi-layered work showing us the famine as it happened through the lens of a single town – Macroom, Co. Cork – and its environs. Local pawnbroker Cornelius Creed is at the juncture between the classes. Sensitive and empathetic, he is a voice on behalf of the poor, and his story is entwined with that of Pádraig ua Buachalla. Through these characters – utilising local history and documentary evidence – Declan creates a kaleidoscopic view of this defining moment in Ireland’s history.
Interviewer: Anne Flaherty
A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and  The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from  Africa and Asia.  She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.

During the interview in this podcast Claire discusses her recently published novel Small Things Like These. Set in 1985 in New Ross, Co. Wexford during the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces his busiest season.  Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Claire Keegan grew up on a farm in Wicklow. Her first collection of short stories, Antarctica, was completed in 1998, for which she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Her second short-story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. Foster, a short novel, was published in 2010 and won the Davy Byrnes Award. Claire currently holds the Briena Staunton Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Anne Flaherty: A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from  Africa and Asia.  She is a graduate of  Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s  Literature from the University of Surrey.

We are pleased to present Jan Carson in conversation with Anne Flaherty.
About Jan Carson: born in Ballymena, Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator now based in Belfast. Her writing includes Malcolm Orange Disappears (2014), Children’s Children, (2016), and two micro-fiction collections, Postcard Stories 1 and 2 (2017 & 2020).  
Jan won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition in 2016 and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Story Prize and Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize. Her most recent novel The Fire Starters (2020) won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland, the Kitschies Prize for Speculative Fiction and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Book Prize. Jan’s most recent 10 part short story series, The Last Resortwas transmitted on BBC Radio 4 in early 2021. In January this year she hosted an online symposium showcasing contemporary Northern Irish writers: Prophets, Makers and Risk Takers.
She is currently writer in residence on an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the depiction of Dementia in contemporary fiction. 
Jan’s third novel, No Promised Land will be published in Summer 2021.
About Anne Flaherty: A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from Africa and Asia. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.

We are pleased to present Glenn Patterson in conversation with Anne Flaherty.
About Glenn Patterson: born and based in Belfast, Glenn Patterson is a graduate of the University of East Anglia creative writing course. He is the author of 11 highly acclaimed novels, including Burning Your Own (1988), Fat Lad (1992),  That Which Was (2004), The Mill for Grinding Old People Young (2012) and Gull (2016). He also co-wrote the screenplay of the film Good Vibrations (2013) about the Belfast music scene of the 1970s. Glenn is also well known for his non-fiction titles which include his collected journalistic writings Lapsed Protestant (2006), Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2008), a memoir of his grand-parents and Backstop Land (2019) concerning Northern Ireland and Brexit. He has also written plays for Radio 3 and Radio 4. 
Glenn is the recipient of numerous awards including Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (1988), Betty Trask Award (1988) Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award (1993),  Arts Council Northern Ireland Major Individual Artist Award (2006), and Heimbold Visiting Chair of Irish Studies (2016).  
He is currently Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
About Anne Flaherty: A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and  The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from  Africa and Asia.  She is a graduate of  Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.