Retreat to Deep Ireland
Facilitators: The Beara Writing Experience’s John O’Leary, Sue Booth-Forbes, and Paddy O’Conor (www.beara-writing-experience.com)
Arrival: 9 April 2012
Departure: 15 April 2012
“Sometimes we need to set down our burdens and wait for our souls to catch up.”
As a participant, you can expect to:
- Retreat into the atmosphere of peace and tranquility that is the Beara Peninsula.
- Enhance your own creativity and your writing skills as you study Irish literature, history and culture and gain inspiration from a landscape whose haunting beauty cannot but lead to an enlargement of the heart and mind.
- Immerse yourself in rural Irish life and culture.
- Find freedom and enrichment in the natural beauty of the landscape and the sea.
In the wild beauty of the Beara Peninsula in West Cork, where rocky mountains tower over the whispering sea, our retreat facilitators will guide you on an amazing journey, leading to a deep understanding of this wondrous place.
To encounter a new place is to feel something of the vast excitement, something also of the terror, of the first peoples who came to Beara. You can imagine yourself into the worlds of these peoples as their ships nosed up the fjord into the interior, their poet chanting the landscape into existence.
This is to say that to be in Beara is always new, always a voyage of discovery. To live here is, also, however, always ancient – it is to live in a landscape formed by centuries of human work and the hopes that drove it. People who lived here thousands of years ago have left their marks on the landscape in the various archeological sites spread throughout the peninsula, and they will be part of your retreat experience.
Our morning workshops will, in a warm and supportive way, help you to develop your creativity and your writing skills. Your time in Beara will also be a journey of self-discovery. There will be time for you to explore and begin to understand this magical place and enjoy being a part, too, of this welcoming and vibrant community. Take time for yourself also, to explore and begin to understand this magical place. Enjoy being part of a vibrant and welcoming community. Having immersed yourself in all that is Beara, you will leave feeling affirmed and enriched and already looking forward to your next visit.
Testimonials for The Beara Writing Experience:
Joanne Hughes, Imbolg Workshop Retreat, 2011 [Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, USA]: "In a short period of inspired teaching and penetrating exercises - as well as a great gathering of interesting participants - our poetic voices were encouraged and strengthened. There was a combination of poetry, probing questions, inventive thinking, and deep listening that led us to an articulation of the sea and the ever-changing local environment in voices honed by this time together, voices uniquely our own capturing our individual experience in the land. The Imbolg workshop retreat opened a path of extraordinary creativity and companionship among the participants and the leaders. Remarkable!"
Peter Dunne, Bealtaine Workshop Retreat, 2011 [Los Angeles, California, USA]: "For-tunately for us, long before God created Hollywood, He created Ireland, home of the real storytellers, and the Beara Peninsula, home of the extraordinary and spiritual setting of Anam Cara.”
Leanne O’Sullivan, Award-winning Poet [Beara, Co. Cork, Ireland]: "I had the great luck and privilege to have been taught by Paddy O'Conor for many years. In his teaching, there is such glowing enthusiasm and a commitment to the world of poetry that it encourages and gives students the confidence to keep writing. As both a teacher and a writer, his work has allowed students to believe more strongly in their own abilities, and for me, it has created a vitally strong foundation for my own poetry."
Nilmini Fernando, Bealtaine Workshop Retreat, 2011 [Castletownbere, Co. Cork, Ireland]: "The workshop retreat was provocative, refreshing and effective, a perfect way into new writing, in an atmosphere that was creative, spacious and supportive. It has renewed my connection with the majesty of the sea and given me a new way into my creativity."
Leaders’ Bios:
John O’Leary: Although born in Boston, John O'Leary has lived for most of his life on a small farm in Allihies on the Beara Peninsula, overlooking the North Atlantic and farming sheep and breeding Irish Draught Horses. He has been Visiting Professor of Creative Writing and Irish Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University and Seattle University and has taught at numerous other universities in America and Europe. A widely published poet and translator, he has been the recipient of the Patricia Lynch Centenary Award, The Missouri Translation Prize, and an Arts Council of Ireland Award for his book Whether There Is Sorrow in the Demons about St Columba. His book of 77 sonnets Salt [Zenane, 2000] won a Pushcart Prize that year, and its sequel Sea [Zenane, 2003] completes the sequence with a fleet of poems about the North Atlantic, "wanting to write a wave".
Sue Booth-Forbes: Following a twenty-five year career as a writer and editor that began at Cambridge University Press in Cambridge, England, Sue Booth-Forbes is Director of Anam Cara Writer's and Artist's Retreat in Eyeries, Beara, Co. Cork, Ireland. She moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts and opened the retreat in June 1998. Sue helps sponsor the Friday Nights in Eyeries fundraisers, is on the Editorial Board of the Eyeries Parish Newsletter, serves as Assistant Secretary for Beara Tourism, and is the Easter-egg-dying consultant to the Eyeries and Urhan National Schools.
Paddy O’Conor: Paddy O’Conor recently retired from Scoil Phobail Bheara where he was teacher of English and Deputy Principal for many years. During that time, he helped numerous young writers develop their talents, including one of Ireland’s foremost young poets, Leanne O’Sullivan. He has a long association with Poetry Ireland and is now devoting more time to his own writing as well as to facilitating creative writing workshops. He has always had a special interest in boats and the sea and also recently retired as Emergency Coxswain of the Castletownbere Lifeboat.
For more information and to book into the Retreat to Deep Ireland, contact Sue at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or +353 (0)27 74441.
