The Anam Cara Cascade
Issue 2

(intended for publication in 2001 One of my Celtic New Year's [November 1] resolutions is to have the newsletter appear on a much more regular basis!)

From Sue . . .

Two years have passed since the first issue of The Anam Cara Cascade. But instead of feeling guilty, I am delighted. The days have been so busy and full of interesting people and their work that I haven't had time to get to the second issue. But because there is so much to report, I am going to start with some of the highlights of 1999 and work forward as well as try to get the newsletter out more frequently. Once again, please feel free to make comments or suggestions, provide tips or lessons learned, and offer your advice or your work for inclusion. And, also, please remember that the best way for people to become acquainted with Anam Cara is through the interest and/or experience of others -- by word of mouth. If you know someone who might be interested in spending time here, please let them know that the web site's address is: http://www.anamcararetreat.com.

Anne Murphy ( Dublin ) painting the Kealincha River cascades, August 1999

Anam Cara Exhibition Features Local Potter

After working for several years at his potter's wheel in a remote corner of the Glengarriff Forest , Pat O'Connell honored Anam Cara in 1999 with the first public showing of his work. And for those who appreciate fine artistic skill, his vases, urns, coffee urns, bowls, goblets, and boxes--with their uniquely-Pat glazes and Celtic and Middle-Eastern designs--were worth the wait. Declan Hassett, Arts and Entertainment Columnist for The Irish Examiner and author of two very well-received memoirs -- All Our Yesterdays and The Way We Were -- launched the exhibit. In his remarks in praise of Pat's extraordinarily beautiful work, he encouraged the crowd of about 60 to buy while they could afford to because soon Pat's creations would be out of reach of most of our pocketbooks.

The exhibition was open by appointment to the public from the day of the launch on 6 November to the end of the month. By the time everyone had picked up the pieces they had purchased during that time, we are happy to say that Pat had very little to pack up and take home himself.

The Recipe Box . . .

Comfort Food: Rice Pudding

Sue Emmett, Writer, Oregon, USA

4 C milk (can use combination of milk and cream)
4 eggs
1 C sugar
1-1½ t vanilla
2½-3 C cooked rice
Raisins
Dash of salt

• Place milk in pan on stove and heat just until tiny bubbles appear on the edges. Set aside.
• Stir up eggs in bowl with whip.
• Add sugar and whip until dissolved.
• Add milk slowly, stirring while pouring.
• Add cooked rice and raisins, stir until distributed evenly through milk.
• Add vanilla and stir.
• Place mixture in casserole dish, and place dish into another bowl/pan with water coming up sides of pudding idsh about 1½". Sprinkle top generously with ground nutmeg.
• Bake at 350 degrees F. for approximately 1 hour (if in round casserole; less if in flat oblong dish)
• Test by inserting clean knife in middle, if knife comes out clean, pudding is done. Pudding will still be soft in middle and fairly firm on edge.

Residents' Updates . . .

Iron Press ( England ) is "very pleased to have just published the latest collection of poetry by Pauline Plummer ( England ) , the current Teeside Poet Laureate. Titled Demon Straightening, this new collection plays with form and free verse in a wide range of poems both personal and political, often run through with a dark humour." The 70-page book costs £5.99 (British Sterling) and can be ordered from Iron Press, 5 Marden Terrace, Cullercoats, North Shields, Northumberland NE30 4PD, England, Tel/Fax: Tyneside (0191) 253 1901. (See her poem under "Work from Writers-in-Residence.")

Susan DeBow( Ohio, USA ) , a writer and columnist, has expanded her publishing horizons tremendously since her fortnight of work at Anam Cara. Just since January, she has added set up her own web site -- Writing Out Loud (www. ) and added several print and online publications, such as The Chicago Tribune, The Cincinnati Post, and ShesGotVote.com, to the number of places where her columns appear. In preparation for her visit to Ireland , her first journey on her own, she wrote four columns for her then only newspaper outlet. You will find the last of those columns below under the heading "Work from Writers-in-Residence" below.

Keith Taylor ( England ) is publisher and co-founder of Bristol Good Reads.

"Wild Thing" (see under "Work from Writers-in-Residence" ) won the second prize in the 1998 Burmah Castrol Staff Charity Group /Reader’s Digest Short Story Competition. Further collections of Bristol Good Reads (4 stories per collection) can be obtained from:

• The Durdham Down Bookshop, 39, North View,
  Westbury Park , Bristol 6, England . Price: £1.00.
• By post, send cheque for £1.20 to Bristol Good Reads,
  28, Berkeley Road , Westbury Park , Bristol , BS6 7PJ , England . Please make cheques payable to K. Taylor.

For details of all the stories in the Bristol Good Reads collections, send SAE to Bristol Good Reads at the above address.

Poet Susan Elizabeth Howe ( Utah, USA ) wrote a prize-winning poem while working here in August of 1999, "Letter To My Husband, Sent From Ireland" (see "Work from Writers-in-Residence"). Taking the top prize of the Crown Competition of the 1999 Eisteddfod Contest sponsored by the BYU College of Humanities, where she is an Associate Professor of English, she was awarded $300.

Anne Lister (England), "Singing on the Wind," Anne's latest CD, made it into the Top Ten Albums of 1999 list of Scott Alarik, music writer for The Boston Globe. Anne wrote most of the new songs while at Anam Cara, basing many of them on local lore and her experiences while here. In keeping with her "calling" to "sing the land awake," she wrote "The Hag of Beara," the story that the goddess turned to stone would like those who visit her to hear.

What's Been Happenin' . . .

Artist-in-Residence and Schools Create Murals

After the incredibly successful launch of the exhibition of her paintings here on Valentine's Day 1999, Deborah Barlow ( Massachusetts, USA ) conducted a "painting because you enjoy it" workshop for the Fifth and Sixth Classes at the Eyeries National School . Twenty students walked the 1/2 mile from the school to Anam Cara and spent the afternoon looking at Deborah's paintings, discussing with her their own creativity, and then experimenting with various ways of approaching abstract art.

The students so loved working with Deborah, that she agreed to come back in May to help them and the students at Urhan National School get started on mural projects at their schools. Under the theme "Nest of Belonging" taken from John O'Donohue's poem "A Friendship Blessing," students from Junior Infants to Sixth Class in both schools painted their own vision of what made them feel that they belonged on the Beara Peninsula.

The two mural projects were funded through a grant from the Cork County Council; we have helped write another proposal this year to the Council for the students of the two schools to produce and perform a millennium pagaent.

As part of our commitment to the arts in West Cork , we helped organize and run the first West Cork Music Fringe Festival at the end of June 1999. The Fringe included the launch of the 1999 Fish Short Story Collection, From The Bering Strait and Other Stories, featuring the winners of the Fish International Short Story Contest (see Fish Publishing's web site at http://www.midnet.ie/beara/fish.htm); a week of readings by well-known Irish authors; and an all-night reading by amateur as well as professional authors under the title "The Midnight Court," taken from the rather bawdy poem written in 1780 by Brian Merriman. Second prize for the Fish Contest was a week's stay at Anam Cara, which was won by Geraldine Taylor ( England ) for her story "Etienne's Tattoo."

The second Fringe Festival also included the Launch of the 2000 Fish Short Story Collection, Five O'Clock Shadow and Other Stories. The second-prize winner was Kevin Parry ( England ) for his short story "Drowned Boy." Kevin worked at Anam Cara in June and read his story at the launch of the 2000 collection.

Anam Cara Says Goodbye to Two Animal Residents

Grannie, who was named after the Irish pirate queen Granuialle O'Malley, died 23 March 1999 , during a routine operation. For those who haven't met her, she was a lively, lovely, black and white Jack Russell terrier who often sprang straight up in the air to face height to see what you looked like. She loved to accompany people on their hikes and to make sure that the hens stayed in their yard. She is missed every day.

Mary Todd Lincoln, one of the charter members of the First Ladies Club, passed on last September of an apparent stroke and not long after the Bantam Rooster was introduced to the henhouse. The jury is still out on whether there was a connection.

Work from Writers-in-Residence . . .

Wild Thing
Keith Taylor ( England )  

Zaire , 28th June 1997

In the aching sadness of the African pre-dawn, I replay every moment of that day. The beach, the woods and Jamelle, her auburn hair banging round like a club, dissolving into a shower of sparks, then flowing off her slim shoulders and down her smooth back like stream water. Long legs, bare waist; she was unforgettable, unforgettable . . .

I climb off the camp bed and crawl round the tent with a torch, checking my cameras for the day’s filming. Everything seems under control.

Yorkshire , 28th June 1981

I was struck dumb. Never in my fifteen years had I known anyone as wild and beautiful as Jamelle. I swallowed awkwardly, my mouth was dry. I kicked a hole in the grey beach with my trainers. At Kirkby-on-Sea, even the sand looked second-hand.

She ran into the sea, and suddenly the shabby beach with its broken deckchairs and litter seemed like the Mediterranean . I followed her into the shallows. The sea sucked at my feet, it felt like eels wriggling round my ankles.

I squatted down on my heels pretending to look through the water for starfish. By now Jamelle was twenty yards out, with some older boys. They stamped about in the water, shouting and splashing, but Jamelle swam round them like a shark with hardly a ripple. I felt breathless with jealousy, it was like a steel band round my chest. I couldn’t bear to see her with anyone else. I twisted round on my heels.

The wave hit me hard in the back, lifted me up, thrashing wildly like a spider in a sink, and dropped me on the wet sand with a mouth full of salt water, coughing and feeling sick.

“Mad Mike's got himself drowned!” There was a shout from the older boys - the Atkins brothers, local loudmouths. I tried to stand up and pitched sideways. I gagged on salt water and struggled to my feet.

“Here, you two, give us a hand, our Mike needs a swimming lesson!” The three boys grabbed me, swung me, and threw me back in. This time I went in head first, and swallowed a lot of water and sand. I thought I going to drown.

“You’re useless at swimming, aren’t you?” A hand gripped mine and pulled me out. It was Jamelle. Close to she was even lovelier. Hazel eyes, delicate eyebrows, small mouth - and that red hair.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” she said.

“Come on, Jamelle.” The Atkins brothers were still hanging around, looking uneasy now, because Jamelle was with me. They were starting to jeer. She turned on them.

“Push off, brickheads, go and drown yourselves!”

I was still holding her hand. It was warm. I dropped it, feeling as though I had done something wrong.

“It won’t bite you!”

“What?”

“My hand.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re Mad Mike aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” My family lived in a council semi near the Chappletown brickworks. ‘Mad Mike’ came from my obsession with nature, stalking the foxes and stoats in the overgrown clay pits. Everyone thought that I was nuts.

“I’m Jamelle.”

“I know,” I said. We all knew Jamelle. She stirred up more male desires than any other girl at our school.

“Why were you sitting in the water like that?”

“I was looking for starfish.” And watching you, I thought.

“Starfish?”

“If you touch them, they drop their legs off.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it was grisly enough to be interesting.

“Umm!” She looked half-interested. I was desperate: I wanted to stay with her like this for ever, just looking into those eyes. I swear I could feel the heat of her tanned body across the eighteen inches that separated us. Then she looked away to where the Atkins brothers were playing volleyball over a pile of deckchairs, shouting and pushing at each other. In another second I would lose her, and a chance like this would never ever happen again. I frantically thought of something to keep her interested, something to hold her there.

“Do you want to see a skylark’s nest?”

“What?”

“There are babies in it . . .”

“So?”

“There are four of them, and there are deer in the woods . . .”

“Where?”

“Up there.”

“Oh, all right, but I haven’t got all day.”

We climbed up the cliff path, past the nodding foxgloves, away from the beach and the Atkins gang and the sea I couldn’t swim in, up into the clear blinding light of the fields that ran right up to the track along the cliff edge. I could hear the bubbling song of the skylarks above us. I desperately wanted to tell Jamelle to look up, but I was afraid that if I kept her waiting for the nest I’d promised, she would lose interest and go back to the beach.

The skylark’s nest was a scrape in the ground roughly lined with mea dow grass. There were three babies in it. The first feathers were coming through, making them look like little badly-plucked chickens. Jamelle knelt down.

“They’re sweet.”

“Yeah. That’s funny, there were four yesterday,” I said. “Watch out, one’s missing.” We circled the nest. There was a tiny piping. Jamelle stooped to pick up the missing chick, which was wedged in the grass stems about two feet from the nest.

It was Jamelle’s idea to plait grass stalks together to make a little stretcher, to put under the baby skylark.

“It’s still alive, just.” She placed it delicately back in the nest, then she hesitated. “I want to see the skylarks come back to feed it.”

“No way, they’ll see us a mile off.” I held my breath and with my remaining courage said, “Let’s go and see if the deer are in the wood.”

Jamelle followed me into the cool green shade under the oaks. I could smell the musky scent of a dog fox, the heavy sweetness of honeysuckle in a clearing. Brown speckled-wood butterflies danced round each other spiralling up into the blue sky.

“Those butterflies are flirting aren’t they?” said Jamelle, “If I were a butterfly, would you chase me?”

I almost told her the truth, that really they were fighting and the loser would be chased off the territory. “Yes, flirting,” I said. Then suddenly, I realised that Jamelle was flirting with me. Jamelle! My heart surged. I looked at her, but she was watching the butterflies again.

“Where are the deer?”

“See that big branch,” I said, pointing to a huge old oak, covered in ivy, “I sit up there and watch them.”

“Let’s go up!” said Jamelle. She scrambled effortlessly up the wide trunk.

We waited, sitting side by side on the branch, and talked about parents and school and things, as though we had been friends for years. The deer didn’t show up, and eventually Jamelle became restless and wanted to go back.

She slipped coming down the trunk, and fell onto me. Her hair was in my face, my hands were holding her arms. She smelled of the sea and “Forever”. I knew the scent, my sister used to drench herself in it. Jamelle looked up. Suddenly she smiled and kissed me full on the lips. Then she ducked under my arms and ran across the clearing and back into the field. I followed her, my face hot and tingling.

The kiss; I lean against the door of the tent in Zaire . The first rents of dawn light appear in the night sky. I touch my lips by reflex. How many times have I done this since that day?

We walked slowly back to the beach. On the cliff top there was a sudden shower; the wind got up and Jamelle shivered. Her thin beach top was soaked.

“Use my pullover, I don’t need it.” She hesitated. Her teeth were chattering, and she pulled the pullover on.

By the time we got back to the beach, the rain had driven most people away. There was no sign of the Atkins gang. I was flying high with the success of the nest; Jamelle was in my pullover, and she’d kissed me.

“You’d better have your jumper back.” She pulled it off in that cross-handed way that girls use, and shook out her hair.

“Keep it,” I said, fighting to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“It’s yours,” she said firmly, and handed it back. It was mine all right, worn elbows and totally grotty; why would she want to keep it? I felt foolish and the link between us was broken.

“’Bye.” She turned and ran off across the sand dunes towards the town.

I threw myself into a hollow in the dunes and rolled up into a ball round the pullover. It was scented and still warm from her skin.

It was dark when I crawled out of the dunes. There was a faint phosphorescence along the beach and my footsteps showed darkly. I tugged the pullover over my head and went to catch the last bus home. Why, why did I have the strangest feeling that that magical day was an ending rather than a beginning?

A week later, my mum found the pullover stuffed in a corner of my sports bag. She washed it, and Jamelle’s scent was gone. So was something else - something indefinable, wild and unfettered. I felt as if my life had come to a full stop.

Zaire , dawn

I pick up the Arriflex cine camera. I carefully load the can of film, then I cradle the camera in my hands, and I think of Jamelle. At first, the pain had been unbearable, I felt the steel band close across my chest if any other boys even spoke to her. I stopped going to school. I withdrew into myself, I spent hours hiding in the clay pits, reliving that skylark day with Jamelle. Slowly I rediscovered my love of nature. My uncle gave me an old Nikon camera and I began to photograph wild things, capturing their beauty on the thin band of film so that I could hold them forever.

Now I travel the world: I have photographed birds of paradise in New Guinea , wild stallions in the American West, and now white rhinos in Africa . I am fascinated by things that are wild and free. My films win awards - they are said to be: beautiful, reverent, insightful.

In my dreams, I’m on the high branch with Jamelle again. The skylarks are singing and the foxgloves are still nodding their approval. But dreams pass and the dawn always comes. In my loneliness, I am driven by a desire to capture wild and beautiful things, because I cannot possess the one, most precious, wild thing that never was mine to possess.

From Demon Straightening
Pauline Plummer (England)

Archaeology in Ireland
for Rose O'Farrell

I came to dig for the secrets
of my mother's long silences.
I asked the grass for patience
as I entered the valley's
brooding loop of water
and remembered my mother's
fierce temper and dark humour.

In this lime washed cottage
visited a girl with shadows
in the hazel eyes and hair.
The strong straight back
drove in the pony trap to Mass
with freckled peasant hands
shaped into an arc of prayer.

In country dance halls
my father courted her
foxtrotting her to the fiddle.
He loved the craic
but in later life when drunk
sneered at her plain ways,
the Liverpool way she spoke.
The back stayed straight,
the confidence broke.

Her people, my people worked
this stony soil on steep fields
where the farm yards genuflect
in shadow once the sun has fled.
They crossed the water
settling in the choked cities
at the tail end of the empire
that had made them emigrants
grafting for booty
to free their children from want.

She thrust us into schooling
the food from which she'd fasted.
Owning nothing
she left as her inheritance
one diamond ring
and random bits of Irishness
wrapped in the gift of Faith
to wear as warm coat
vivid dress and straitjacket.

In old age she despaired
at all the prayers fallen
on stony ground unheard;
grief ran like a fault line
through her to me and back
to a place we once belonged
loved but also hostile
where I try to catch an old song
in the wind like one beguiled.

Letter to My Husband, Sent from Ireland
Susan Elizabeth Howe (Utah, USA)

You would like this kitchen--it tilts
toward Coulagh Bay. Windows on three sides.
Behind me, stone hills with their shag of green,
the sheep white messages of affection.
One hooded crow caws what I already know--
that we're thirty years past twenty, that the body
is as fragile as a package of sea mail,
that I must cross an ocean of icebergs
to get home. At breakfast these thoughts, knotty
as that sore muscle in your neck, assail
until a wasp strafes me, then caroms off
the peaches and into my mug. She scalds,
dying quickly, her think abdomen with its stinger
curling to touch her head. I spoon her out
of my lemon and ginger tea. On the saucer,
wings spread, she looks like an Irish faery,
caught. Could she be an omen
from this magic-haunted land?
Yes, life has it trajectories--who would believe
our single paths could intersect
with such force? Now, after this happy year,
the world has bounced you to your work,
me to mine, the boiling Atlantic between.
Dear one, I believe in our prayers,
the weeks that will bring me home.
But one day death will sting one of us first--
you and I must take in the wasp. To prepare
myself, I'm telling you her story. And
drinking the dark tea where she died.

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