Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend, 4th - 7th May 2012

Registration

7pm. Cyril Gray Memorial Hall, Dugort.
Cost of full weekend: €90

Welcome Address: Michael Burke

(Cathaoirligh of Mayo County Council)

Official Opening: Angela Spizig

(Deputy Mayor Cologne)

Vice Mayor for Culture, the Media and International Affairs. She has been active in many projects concerning Heinrich Böll and his work. The main focus of her work is culture, the media, ICT, international affairs. Since the year 2000 she has been an active member on the board of the Global Cities Dialogue: The Global Cities Dialogue is a worldwide network of cities, which deals with the new technologies and their application in city administrations, with e-government, with problems and possibilities of the information/knowledge society and the aim of overcoming the digital divide. She is also Vice President of the European Cultural network “Les Rencontres”. As Angela Spizig speaks English and French fluently, she is often invited to make contributions or to be the Chair at Cultural conferences all over Europe, her main focus being literature, film, photography. Since 2000 she has been serving the city as one of the three Vice Mayors of the City of Cologne.

William Cash: Lecture on Graham Greene in Achill

(Author of The Third Woman)

Lecture to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of “ The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene. Educated at Westminster and Cambridge, William Cash is the author of The Third Woman: The Secret Passion that inspired The End of the Affair, Educating William: Memoirs of a Hollywood Correspondent and a play about the philosopher AJ Ayer. He regualrly appears on radio and television, including the Today Programme, and Radio 4's Start The Week. In the 1990s, he worked as a foreign correspondent in America for The Times and the Spectator in the 1990s before founding Spear's magazine, Europe's leading wealth management and culture magazine. He has twice won Editor of the Year at the Independent Publisher Awards. Questions and open discussion led by Dr Lara Feigel. Lecturer in English King's College London.

Eoin Halpin: Guided Walk Keem Bay / Cpt Boycott.

10am. Meet Keem Bay Car Park (upper).

Eoin is the co-founder and director of Archaeological Development Services Ltd (Est. 1989) a company which works on a commercial basis with a mixture of individuals, property development companies and the infrastructure providers. The company's core business is to provide archaeological services to the construction and development industries, providing a wide variety of services, enabling compliance with heritage and planning requirements. A graduate of Archaeology and History of Art from University College Dublin, Eoin worked for 10 years with the Central Excavation Unit of the Scottish Office in Edinburgh, concentrating on the Highlands and Islands, culminating in his co-directing the excavation of a chambered tomb on the Point of Cott, Westray, Orkney. He returned to Ireland in 1989 and settled in Belfast and helped establish ADS. His current role within ADS is that of senior consultant and business development manager. Eoin is a member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists and a member of the Institute of Archaeologist of Ireland of which he has been chairperson. His work has appeared in numerous publications in academic journals, historic society journals and monographs. Lunch in Gielty’s Bar.

Heinrich Böll Cottage in Dugort open to public.

2.00pm - 5.00pm

Jack Harte: Creative Writing Seminar

2pm. Áras Forbairt Acla - Crumpaun School.

Jack Harte was born in Killeenduff, near Easkey, Co Sligo. Harte's first collection of stories, Murphy in the Underworld, was published by Glendale Press in 1986. Dedalus Press published his novella, Homage, in 1992 and his second collection of stories, Birds and other Tails, in 1996. From Under Gogol's Nose, a volume of new and selected stories was published by Scotus Press in 2004, along with Lament for the Birds, a CD of his stories and songs commissioned by Sligo County Council. Individual stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in Ireland, Britain, U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, Finland, India, Bulgaria, and Russia, and have been included in many school text-books. In 2010 published Unravelling the Spiral - an account of the life of Sligo sculptor Fred Conlon. He was a founder member of the Achill Heinrich Böll Committee. He established with others the Irish Writers' Centre at 19 Parnell Square. In 2009 the Irish Writers’ Centre was on the point of closing because it had lost its state funding. Harte returned to the Board of Directors and became Chairman, working with other activists and supporters to keep the Centre open.

Launch of new edition of Heinrich Böll's Irish Journal

3.00pm. Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.

Published by Melville House Publishers, New York.

Translation by Leila Vennewitz, with new introduction by Hugo Hamilton. A unique entry in the Böll library, Irish Journal records an eccentric tour of Ireland during the 1950s. An epilogue, written fourteen years later, reflects on the enormous changes to the country and the people that Böll loved. Irish Journal is a time capsule of a land and way of life that has disappeared.

René Böll: Lecture - Writing as Profession

3.30pm. Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.

Presentation on the work and life his parents Annemarie and Heinrich Böll.

René Böll, born on 31 July 1948 in Cologne. Working as visula artist s ince 1963, auto-didactic study and painting. From 1966, studies with Bernhard Mueller Feyen and in 1967 studied painting and printmaking (especially: lithography) in Cologne and Vienna. 1972 first work with Chinese and Japanese ink. From 1975 to 1988 Co-founder and publisher of Lamuv publisher. 1978 Publisher and translator (from Spanish) activity as a photographer. 1985 editor of the six-volume edition: Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Since 1988 freelance artist. From 1993, new work with Chinese ink. Since 1999 etchings. Study tours e.g. to: China, Ecuador, Ireland, Kenya and Russia.

Dr Lara Feigel: Lecture - 'I don’t like the peace'

4.00pm. Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.

'I don’t like the peace': wartime exhilaration and postwar austerity in The End of the Affair.

Lecturer King's College London. Dr Lara Feigel's research is centered on literature in the late-modernist period, focusing particularly on the 1930s and the Second World War. She is the author of Literature, Cinema, Politics 1930-1945: Reading between the Frames (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and the editor (with Alexandra Harris) of Modernism on Sea (Peter Lang, 2009), a collection of essays about artistic responses to the seaside. She is currently completing an edition of the journals of Stephen Spender (with John Sutherland and Natasha Spender, for publication by Faber) and is writing a book about literary response to the airwar.

Screening: The End of the Affair (Screenplay/Dir. Neil Jordan, 1999)

4.45pm. Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.

Reading by Harry Clifton

8pm. St. Thomas's Church, Dugort.

Harry Clifton - Ireland Professor of Poetry.

Currently he is Ireland Professor of Poetry 2010–2013. Born in Dublin in 1952 and educated at University College Dublin, Harry Clifton left Ireland in the nineteen seventies to lecture at a teacher training college in post Civil War Nigeria, and later worked in the Far East administering aid programmes for Indo-Chinese refugees in Thailand. He returned to Ireland in 1982. In 1987 he married the Irish novelist Deirdre Madden and moved to Italy, a time documented in his prose memoir 'On the Spine of Italy'. Subsequently they lived in Switzerland, England and Germany, before settling in Paris for ten years. In 2004, he returned to Ireland, and has been teaching at University College Dublin until last year. His collections of poems include 'The Desert Route; Selected Poems 1973-1988' and 'Secular Eden; Paris Notebooks 1994-2004'. His work, which has won numerous awards and distinctions, has been translated into several European languages. He believes the true home of the poet is 'not in a place, but in the language itself.'

Reading by Michael Kleeberg

St. Thomas's Church, Dugort.

Michael Kleeberg was born in Stuttgart in 1959 and grew up in Böblingen and Hamburg. He studied political science and visual communication at the University of Hamburg, then lived for extended periods in Rome, Berlin, and Amsterdam. In 1986, he moved to Paris where he ran an advertising agency until 1994. Michael Kleeberg now lives and writes in Berlin. He has also translated English and French-speaking authors, including Marcel Proust, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and John Dos Passos. Awards: 1996 Anna Seghers Prize for Proteus der Pilger (Proteus the Pilgrim) - 2000 Lion Feuchtwanger Prize for Ein Garten im Norden (A Garden in the North) - 2008 Imgard Heilmann Prize for Karlmann - 2008 City of Mainz Writer-in-Residence - 2010 New York Stipend from the German Literature Fund.

Reading from new work by Hugo Hamilton

St. Thomas's Church, Dugort.

Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of THE SPECKLED PEOPLE (4th Estate), a German-Irish memoir of growing up in Dublin during the 50s/60s with a fervent Irish nationalist father and German mother who came to Ireland in the aftermath of World War 2. The memoir has found resonance right across the globe and has been translated into 20 languages. Hailed as an 'instant classic' by Roy Foster, his account of German-Irish childhood addresses all the 'great issues of the 20th century' (Nuala O'Faolain). Joseph O'Connor described THE SPECKELED PEOPLE as a 'book for our times and perhaps for all time'. It won the prestigious PRIX FEMINA etranger in France, as well as the BERTO PRIZE in Italy, and appeared on the New York Times notable books list. He is the acclaimed author of two memoirs, seven novels and one collection of short stories, all of which reflect on the increasingly compelling issues of cultural divisions, belonging and identity. His latest novel HAND IN THE FIRE (4th Estate) is published April 2010.

Open Forum Discussion

St. Thomas's Church, Dugort.

Harry Clifton, Michael Kleeberg, Hugo Hamilton. Chair: Jack Harte.

Eoin Halpin: Guided walk Inishskea South. Islands of Saints and Scholars.

9am. Meet Dugort Pier. (Advance Booking Essential)

The Inishkea Islands are composed of gneiss ridges (200 million years old) covered with sand forming a unique, if harsh, habitat for the many species of flora and fauna which inhabit them. The Inishkea islands are of major importance to both resident and migrating birds with over 85 types having been recorded. The Mute Swan, the Peregrine and the endangered Corncrake are just some of the bird species which benefit from the peace and protection of the islands. The short grasses of the islands have led the Inishkeas to be of international importance as wintering ground for Barnacle Geese. The lowlying coasts of the islands are home to large numbers of grey seal and occasionally Dolphins and Whales can be seen off shore. The islands are rich in amazing archaeological sites. On the north-east coast of the island there are the possible remains of a number of 5,000 year old Neolithic Tombs. On the south-west of the island there are the remains of a small Early Christian period church, dedicated to St Colmcille. On Inishkea South there are cross-slabs and pillars. Rusheen, a tidal island to the east of Inishkea South was once the site of a Norwegian whaling station, the remains are still evident today. Lunch included. Inishskea visit is Weather dependent. Open Ocean Boat Ride - suitable clothing and footwear essential.

Alternative bad weather event:

Guided Walk - The archaeology of Slievemore - Valley of the Tombs.

10.30am. Meet Deserted Village Car Park, Slievemore.

The foot of Slievemore has a remarkable concentration of megaliths; three court tombs and a portal dolmen, an Iron Age or Early Christian cashel or stone ringfort, an Early Christian graveyard associated archaeological monuments. In a relatively small area, there are four with St Coleman and of course the Deserted Village. The megalithic monuments represent a significant population in the area in the Neolithic some 5,000 years ago, and while it is clear that the people died in the area, there still remains scant evidence of where they lived. The early Christian ecclesiastical site, located close to the modern Slievemore graveyard is dedicated to St Colman (560 -632 AD) an hermetic monk who traveled widely along the west coast, certainly establishing a church on the Aran Islands and died in Kilmacduagh, Co Galway. The Slievemore site contains crosses, a church site and a holy well. Finally the famous Deserted Village at Slievemore, which actually consists of three separate villages, is located along a mile long stretch of road on the southern slopes the mountain. Lunch Gray's Guest House Dugort.